Time Out of Mind
by Neva
Summary: Fifth in the Wallglass Saga. Past: The son of an anti-mutant fanatic makes a disastrous discovery. Present: Issue-conscious teenagers brace themselves for the inevitable. Future: Anybody's guess...
1. Prologue

A/N: Yes, I'm re-posting this one, too, and it's in the _Evolution_ category out of convenience rather than connections to that timeline. (Continuity? We don't got no steenkin' continuity!) Some of the story will be the same, but as you can see, I'm starting things off with a bang.

Disclaimer: If you don't realize by now that I don't own the X-Men, I just feel sorry for you.

Dedication: For Wallglass Saga fans, old and new, with thanks and luv.

Prologue: Visions

Washington, D.C. — May 2003

For the third night in a row, his sleep was disrupted by the nightmares that seemed, when he woke up, to have no connection to his life at all.

**

_He opens the door and he can't believe it, it's those people from the FOH again, those people he thought he'd gotten rid of. What do they want with him? Except_ You know why, _he thinks,_ remember what that sleazy tabloid article called you all those years ago? Remember how you laughed? It wasn't so funny when your dad actually believed that you'd said all those things, was it? It wasn't so funny when muties torched his lab… or when they… when he… _Except_ You know what just happened, you know what's going to happen to all of them, and you know he needs your help.

**

She stands onstage, her hair glowing in the bright lights, and she no longer looks like Angelina or like any of the pop princesses that have come before. She looks like herself, the person she's always wanted to be, and when she starts singing, it's oh so obvious that those years of dreaming and planning have paid off… and that she's earned it.

**

_…and it's not her face that turns and catches his eye, it's Angelina's, after all. Angelina, the last kind of girl he ever expected to fall for. He actually got a lump in his throat at her high-school graduation, and how about that? And now they're taking the road trip that they talked about for months, just the two of them, but all of a sudden a cloud has fallen across the sun and the bright day is as dark as twilight like the solar eclipses that he's heard about but never seen. _ We're on the Band of Total Obscurity_, he thinks, and would ask Angel if she thought that would make a good name for a rock'n'roll group, if he wasn't so terrified, as if he knows_

_as if he knows_

_what's going_

_to happen._

He was awakened by the sound of his own voice: "It isn't true!" He'd been able to talk the talk, to convince the people who really mattered that he was prepared for the worst. But it was a whole different story when you thought — when you were almost sure — it was really true.

_How do you know?_ asked a familiar traitorous voice that spoke up in his head as he stared at the ceiling.

_I just know!_

_I assume that it's different than how you "just knew" about that fire?_

He sat up. He'd never told _anyone_ about that. Not his sister, not his best friend, not his girlfriend (one of the few people in the world who would _possibly_ understand), nobody. She didn't want to know, anyway. 

Even now, with the nightmares still all too fresh in his mind, thinking about her made him smile slightly He and this gorgeous, witty, punky girl who he could never have _imagined_ giving him even a second glance in the old days were going to spend the entire summer together. _And that's good_, he told himself. _That's great. See? I can think about happy things. Think about safe things. Think about things that I _know_._

_Like you _knew_ that —_

_Shut up!_

It was a whole different story when you thought it might be true.

But it _wasn't_ true.

Was it?

He went back to sleep, and the next day, when he woke up, he didn't remember a single one of his dreams.

A/N: I know some of you are probably going to hate me for this. Believe it or not, it was my muse's idea, not mine… and Red Witch will tell you that it _was_ in the comics. Stick around for more!


	2. Flash Forward

A/N: The rest of the story will alternate between the past and the present, with the chapters in italics taking place a few months after _Peace of Mind_ and the chapters in plain text — this one included — taking place about five years later.

Chapter 1: Flash Forward

Interview with pop sensation Phoebe Corlisle, from the May 2008 issue of _Pizzazz_ magazine:

_How does it feel to be today's Britney Spears?_

Not very good.

_Care to explain?_

Given the choice, I'd rather be today's Sarah McLachlan or Tori Amos. They're my… whatsit… influences. But I guess beggars can't be choosers. Who compared me to Britney, anyway?

_Nobody in particular. I was making a point._

Okay. I am nowhere near as famous as she is. Not yet, anyway.

_Would you be surprised if it came to that?_

Who can say?

_…So, in essence, you would say your music is about…_

The insider/outsider experience, in all its incarnations. I've been both. Part of it's about the feeling of having nobody when it would be so easy to have somebody _if_.

_If what?_

If you changed something about yourself. Your image. Your personality. Your views. But that's not all of it. It's also about how you might have had someone all along and not noticed it, even if that someone is yourself, it might be all you need. _You're not alone_ is the main message — cliché but true.

_Do you think that's why you have such a large teenage fan base?_

Could be. Teenagers are the ones who usually feel isolated. You know, they have to deal with each other in the high-school world — peer pressure and first impressions and preparation for Reality — but they also have do deal with themselves for the first time. They can't make any excuses for not facing up to who they are. And they have to deal with the cliques, the set rules for what's important and isn't important, the graffiti in bathrooms and inside desks.

_You obviously remember a lot about your high school years. _

You're making me sound twice my age, come on. I can't forget a lot of it, no matter how hard I try.

_I've read some other interviews —_

Crammed for the big test?

_In a manner of speaking. You don't like to talk about that time in your life much. Does it have something to do with your being both an insider and an outsider? Good girl turned bad girl?_

Never quite. I think my sister took that award. I just stopped being the person everyone expected me to be. The thing about small towns like the one where I grew up is that everyone fits into a slot. The gossip. The rebel. The fanatic. The peacemaker. The freak. And if you step outside your box, people become… disillusioned. They start to wonder if something is wrong.

_Your family…_

Angelina is all the real family I have. Her and my friends, of course.

_So your adolescent years helped shape the atmosphere in your songs?_

Some of them, yeah. It's more what I observed than anything that happened to me specifically. 

_Who was the most influential person in your life during that time?_

Angelina, who else? And Stephen, who was my best friend at the time.

_And the most influential incident?_

Were you never a teenager yourself? _Everything_ is an influential incident.

_Okay, okay, I get the picture. Another question. Would it come as a great surprise to you that a fair number of mutants are hiding in your audience?_

You mean, that they listen to my music or that they're hiding? Because the second one doesn't surprise me a bit.

_The first one, then._

Not really. They're the quintessential freaks and outcasts, and they can't change who they are to fit in.

_You made your breakout performance at a mutant-rights benefit, isn't that right? With a cover of "By Way of Sorrow."_

Yes. That one's on my CD, too. It's always been one of my favorites.

_Because of that, the media's been prone to casting you in a certain light. Anything to say about that?_

Oh, after the Dazzler scandal, they think every pop-culture figure who defends the freaks has to be one themselves.

_Are you?_

Pardon?

_Are you a mutant?_

I don't think it's any of your business —

_Sorry._

It's okay. I was going to say, no. You can know what it's like to live as society's punching bag without ever having experienced it yourself. 

_Have you ever thought of endorsing charities through sales?_

You mean like, "Proceeds from the sale of this album go to…" If all goes well, you can look for that on the liner notes of my second CD.

_Are you excited for whatever the future holds for you?_

Do I have a choice?

**

freakshow617: This who Mutant Registration thing sucks booty.

Dallas: I'm telling you, I read it in the newspaper. They live in the sewers. Who's heard the same? Anyone? Anyone?

IceFemme: More graffiti on our school walls today. "We're watching you, muties!" That kind of thing. I think they know.

shy_violet: "Sucks booty?" Glad to know you have political opinions, freakshow.

Riddler: The sewers? Been into your sister's weed stash again, Dallas? Mutants living in the sewers. Right. And I'm Charles Xavier.

freakshow617: It's like the Sentinels all over again.

Welcome KRACKEL

Krackel: What's up?

shy_violet: Ice, that's awful. And your parents really, seriously don't suspect a thing?

Dallas: Hey Riddler watch what you say about my sister.

Riddler: Krackel? Hey, where've you been?

shy_violet: I doubt Xavier would use the screen name "Riddler."

IceFemme: Not a thing, Vi. Can you believe I've actually been looking around the Net for tips on how to tell your parents you can turn invisible? No luck so far, and I'm really scared.

Dallas: Hey Krackel. Just when we thought it was safe, too.

Riddler: Don't tell me you know Charlie Xavier now.

Krackel: Okay, guys, love you too. What's everyone talking about?

shy_violet: Does anyone else even **remember** the Sentinels?

Dallas: Hey, Vi knows everyone. Her brother's like engaged to Phoebe Corlisle.

shy_violet: Hey Krackel. Haven't seen you before. Update: IceFemme's researching coming-out techniques for the crazed. Ice honey, you know I think you should tell them the truth.

freakshow617: Sure I remember the Sentinels. I was eleven. God that was freaky. 

Riddler: Under the sewers, she says. Under the sewers. Where'd you read that one, Inside Edge?

Krackel: Just finished exams. Go me! School's out when for the rest of you? 

Riddler: Ice, I can't believe you haven't told them yet. You gotta just say it. You're their **daughter.** They'll still love you.

freakshow617: We get out the 17th. I didn't even know Phoebe was dating anyone.

shy_violet: They haven't even set a date yet.

Riddler: I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead and all that, but that Trask guy was a PSYCHO.

shy_violet: She doesn't want a lot of publicity. I'm surprised she even let them do that interview. Riddler, it's not that easy to tell them. Even if they don't throw you out of the house, they'll still be scared for other reasons.

IceFemme: You don't know my parents.

Welcome HARLEY333

Harley333: hey hey. my best friend told her family instead of running away like she planned. they say they'll help her figure sh*t out if this registration thing carries.

shy_violet: Krackel, school gets out for me on the 21st. Not a minute too soon.

Dallas: Hey Riddler I know how you feel. I remember seeing it on TV — he wasn't the only one who they wasted at that rally, remember? Hey Harley. Tell your friend good going. Maybe you can help knock some sense into Ice.

Riddler: What do you think, Vi, she should just keep hiding forever?

freakshow617: Yeah, it's just as loony as mutants hiding in the sewers.

Harley333: thanks dallas. i'll pass it on. vi thinks WHAT?

shy_violet: I didn't say she had to keep hiding forever. I just said that I understand why she might be scared to tell them.

freakshow617: Vi thinks that just because she's friends with that mutant-rights pop star, she knows everything.

IceFemme: They don't think I should do anything with my life except stay here in St. Louis and have babies. They freaked out when I went out with Juan. Ma pours TEA at FOH meetings.

Dallas: Yeah Vi what's up with that? Scare Ice some more why don't you? 

Krackel: Hey guys, leave her alone.

IceFemme: They'd freak if they ever had a conversation with you, Dallas.

shy_violet: I'm not trying to scare her!

freakshow617: Mutants aren't going to be able to survive unless they stop cringing and unless they let the people who love them know that they can still trust each other.

Harley333: damn straight.

shy_violet: You guys, LISTEN to me. I think Ice should tell her parents. I'm just warning her.

Harley333: like she doesn't already know what'll happen.

Dallas: Say it loud and say it proud, Ice. Repeat after me. "I'm a freak and I'm not ashamed of it. Screw anyone who tries to keep me down."

shy_violet: Forget it. I've gotta go.

Goodbye SHY_VIOLET

Harley333: what's her problem?

IceFemme: Dallas, be serious. I'm supposed to say THAT?

Riddler: Does anyone else think there are really mutants living in the sewers?


	3. Home, Sweet Home

Chapter 2: Home, Sweet Home

_Larry hadn't wanted to return home in the first place. After all, his dad hadn't exactly said or done anything that made him deserving of moral support after some freak had set fire to the lab where he would have otherwise constructed an entire fleet of Sentinels. As always, Bolivar Trask, otherwise known as the Mad Scientist, demonstrated a complete ignorance of reality that amazed both his children. How could he act like a complete nut for all those months — no, scratch that, for as far back as either of them could remember — and then want both of them back home after the fire?___

Not to mention telling me I was talking nonsense when I tried to make him actually face reality for a change,_ he remembered thinking on their first day back. _And making a point of calling me Lawrence even though he knows I hate it._ Not even his teachers called him by his full name._

_"You with me?"_

_Larry was jerked back to the present and the crowded cafeteria by the voice of his best friend, Doug Ramsey. They had study hall together right after lunch. "Totally with you." What had they been talking about?_

_"Then what do you think she'll say?" Doug asked in a low voice, glancing around to make sure no teachers were watching._

_"What do I think _who_ will say?"_

_"Dani. When I ask her."_

_"When you ask her… to the prom?"_

_"Ah, a sign of intelligent life! Of course, to the prom!"_

_"Doug, you've been chasing this girl for the entire year and then some. If it hasn't happened now, it's never going to happen." He was getting a little sick of all the prom talk that had been popping up ever since April had turned to May. If it was supposed to keep juniors and seniors sane as the finish line drew near, it was doing just the opposite._

_As usual, his friend ignored him. "I'm trying to fantasize here. I'll pick her up…"_

_"You don't even have a car," Larry pointed out._

_"I know. We'll take yours."_

_"'We'? Leave me out of this one. I'm not even going, remember?"_

_"Because the only girl you want to go _anywhere_ with is back in Hicktown?"_

_"Something like that, yeah." He and Angelina had kept in touch over the last couple of months, for which he was profoundly grateful. "Three's a crowd. And I hate the music they play at those things, anyway."_

_"So do you think I should ask her?"_

_Larry shook his head. "I think she's going to ask _you_," he said._

_"_What_?"_

_"You heard me. Alan's going to ask her this afternoon…"_

_"Alan-with-the-bad-breath Alan?"_

_"Uh-huh. And she'll turn him down — after he asks her, not just because he opened his mouth."_

_"She's always so _nice_," Doug agreed, getting the sloppy-eyed look that he always got whenever the subject of Danielle Moonstar came up. "So tell me more."_

_Inspired, Larry obliged. He had no idea where he was getting this set of projected circumstances — he'd always had enough trouble giving a prognosis for his _own_ love life, let alone his friends'. "She'll be nice about it, yeah. And she'll corner you after biology, and ask you."_

_"Girls don't usually ask guys to the prom," Doug objected. He removed his baseball cap, shook out his bleached hair, and replaced the hat. "You know that, and I know that…"_

_"Since when has Dani let something like what _other_ people are doing stop her?"_

_"She's seriously going to ask me?"_

_"She seriously is."_

_"So what's she going to be wearing when she asks me?"_

_"Quiet! Do you want us to get in trouble?"_

_"That sparkly shirt with the low neck? Come on, if you're predicting my future here, give me something I can work with."_

_"I'm not predicting anyone's future!" Larry snapped. Everyone around him stared._

_"I was just kidding."_

_"So was I. I don't know that it's really going to turn out that way. I was just having fun." He realized that he was practically shouting. _

_And now the study hall monitor was striding over to their table. "Mr. Trask, is everything all right over here?"_

_"Yes," Larry muttered._

_"Getting over-excited about the prom?" she went on._

_"That's it, exactly."_

_"Try and keep it down. I don't want to have to sent any of you to the assistant principal's."_

_"Uh-huh." At least Mrs. Garfield hadn't made some pithy remark about how just because he was a celebrity, he shouldn't think he could get away with everything. Tanya's history teacher had actually threatened her with detention for "being smart" when she pointed out that _she_ wasn't the celebrity. Her crazy father was._

_He took out his algebra book and opened it. "I was just kidding," he muttered to the pages of recursive quadratic functions. He remembered studying these back in Wallglass, being totally clueless, and getting help fromAngelina. _"The operative syllable being 'curse',"_ she'd said. He'd hated them with a passion then, and he still did, but she'd helped him understand the process a little more. _

_There were no words to express how much he missed her._


	4. Humanly Possible

Chapter 3: Humanly Possible   
  
  
  
"Have you ever noticed how the smell in New York changes every five feet?" Phoebe Corlisle asked, inhaling deeply. It was Saturday night, and she and Stephen were on their way to a party at the apartment of a former classmate from NYU.   
  
  
  
He paused and sniffed the air. "Not really."   
  
  
  
"Well, keep walking." Even after all this time of living in the city, she always managed to be dazzled by something new at least every week or so. Sometimes the whole thing felt like a dream, starting from the news that the Sentinel plan had fallen through, continuing through the road-trip she had taken after graduation and the summer spent in California with Angelina, right up to her first record contract. There were times, when she was onstage or talking to fans or safe with Stephen in their own magic tower of an apartment, that she actually felt like a princess in a fairy tale. All that was missing was the "happily ever after."   
  
  
  
And the only thing that could possibly prevent it was a high-school-principal-turned-senator and his plan of action against the supposed scum of society.   
  
  
  
She shook her head. It was better not to think of the things that would destroy the two most important things in her life, at least not until they became a reality. And even when those things were threatened, she would hold onto them both firmly.   
  
  
  
**   
  
  
  
Mira Delaney had only known Phoebe to say hello to at school and was now "beyond a fan." Her apartment had always been small, but the crowds and smoke had reduced it exponentially. She swooped down on the two of them as soon as they walked into the melee, all gauze and jangling bracelets. "I could not believe it," she said at least several times before she disappeared to fetch drinks. She was back in two seconds, still repeating it. "Don't get me wrong, I loved the show last night."   
  
  
  
"Thanks," Phoebe said, taking a hesitant sip.   
  
  
  
"And you're going to introduce me to your accoutrement, right?"   
  
  
  
Phoebe, not at all sure that Mira had used the word "accoutrement" right, nodded and obliged.   
  
  
  
"Not the same Stephen you knew from high school?"   
  
  
  
"Guilty," he admitted.   
  
  
  
"I'm Mira Delaney. Charmed."   
  
  
  
"Likewise."   
  
  
  
"Just a minute! I want to hear all about how you nabbed him, and what you're planning on doing next, and everything, but first I have to tell some people that you're here." And she vanished again.   
  
  
  
"Oh, my God," Stephen whispered.   
  
  
  
"What?"   
  
  
  
"It's Jasmine."   
  
  
  
"Where?" Phoebe looked around quickly.   
  
  
  
"No, I mean that Mira lady. She doesn't remind you of Jasmine? Not even a little?"   
  
  
  
"Maybe if Jas hadn't gone all psycho-bigot."   
  
  
  
"She's right, you know."   
  
  
  
"About what?"   
  
  
  
"You _were _really great," he murmured, kissing her ear.   
  
  
  
"Thanks."   
  
  
  
Mira returned, dragging two strangers with her. "This is my cousin Lester," she announced, indicating a young man with dyed-black hair and a leather jacket. "And this is Corinna. She's been wanting to meet you ever since I told her I used to know you."   
  
  
  
Corinna, who had her fingers laced through Lester's, was short and dark-haired, with violet eyes. "I love your music," she said.   
  
  
  
"Thanks," Phoebe said again.   
  
  
  
"'Somebody Someday' is your favorite, right?" Mira prodded.   
  
  
  
"Uh-huh. Either you've actually hung out with mutants or you have a really good imagination."   
  
  
  
"A little of both, actually."   
  
  
  
"Really." Corinna's eyes narrowed and — Phoebe tensed — swung over to Stephen as if she were trying do decide whether to demand that he identify himself as either "one of us" or "one of them." _ Not her, not here, not now _, Phoebe prayed silently, as a sort of mantra. The purple-eyed woman didn't pursue it further, however. Instead, she asked, "Are you looking forward to going on tour?"   
  
  
  
"Absolutely."   
  
  
  
"Will you be anywhere in Ohio?" Corinna asked. "That's where Lester and I live most of the time."   
  
  
  
"Unless you two decide to move to Russia," Mira added.   
  
  
  
"It's just an idea," Corinna said defensively. "His, not mine, by the way. I don't understand what's so great about Russia."   
  
  
  
"It's, um, historic?" Lester suggested.   
  
  
  
"Yeah — a lot of people killed each other there. Whoo hoo!" She twirled her hands up around her head.   
  
  
  
"Plus, every single conspiracy theory in the world is centered around the Russian government."   
  
  
  
"What, am I supposed to fall at your feet now that you've mentioned conspiracies?"   
  
  
  
"I don't think we're going to be in Ohio this time," Phoebe overrode them. "You can get a schedule of the tour online, though. If I don't back out first."   
  
  
  
"Why would you do that?" Stephen asked, clearly surprised.   
  
  
  
"This is the first time I've ever done this."   
  
  
  
"Wow," Mira said. "And you sounded so confident in your interview."   
  
  
  
"Sounded, yeah," Phoebe acknowledged. "But nervous, too."   
  
  
  
"It's okay to be nervous," Corinna assured her. "You're only human, right?" Phoebe looked over to see if Stephen was rolling his eyes at that, but he had vanished into the melee. "Hey, where's your boyfriend?"   
  
  
  
"Attention, everyone!" All eyes turned to the coffee table onto which the young man in question had climbed while Phoebe's back was turned. She was suddenly reminded of when he'd been forced to stand up in front of the whole cafeteria and sing the school song on their first day of ninth grade. He'd risen to that particular challenge by falling off the table. "Hi," he said. "My name's Stephen. And I've had the pleasure of spending the last twelve years of my life with Phoebe Corlisle. We suffered through high school and kept in touch all through college. We've traveled together, and I think we have a pretty good idea of what's going on in each other's heads. And the weirdest thing is, we haven't gotten tired of each other yet."   
  
  
  
Phoebe could feel herself turning crimson.   
  
  
  
"We've been friends since we were eleven and a couple since we were seventeen," Stephen went on. "Since then, a lot has changed." He cleared his throat. "A _whole _lot. But she's been the only thing in my life I've ever been able to count on. And whatever happens next, she's the only one I want to face it with." He met her eyes. "And yes, I'm asking what you think I'm asking."   
  
  
  
A/N: For those of you who don't already know it, I wrote a supplement to the Wallglass Saga, "I Of The Storm" which can be found on FFN's sister site, FictionPress.Net. I'd love to know what you think! 


	5. Mutant CheeseFinding Powers

Chapter 4: Mutant Cheese-Finding Powers

_"He's going to be in meetings until late," Tanya announced from inside the refrigerator. "Way late. And Larry's working at the arcade. I'm cooking."_

_"Cooking what?" Lorraine wanted to know._

_"I'm not sure yet. Pasta again, probably, but I need something to spice it up."_

_"Cheese," Vanessa suggested. "Lots of cheese."_

_"I, um, don't think we have any cheese."_

_"Basil?"_

_"I don't know if we have that either." She wasn't even completely sure what it was. Some kind of herb, she was almost positive, but the spice rack she'd made last semester in wood shop looked suspiciously empty. She remembered taking great pride in applying the last coat of varnish, no matter how simple the design was._

_"Jesus Christ, who does the shopping around here?"_

_"Larry and me, mostly." Leaving the fridge door open, she stood on her tiptoes to reach the pasta on the top shelf of the pantry. "He got his license just before we left, and he'd still probably drive to Bermuda if someone asked."_

_"Isn't Bermuda an island?" Vanessa asked. She hopped off the counter and took Tanya's place, peering between the bags of leafy vegetables._

_"Yeah. I was making a point. What are you doing?"_

_"Looking for cheese." Without looking, she reached into the backmost recesses of the refrigerator shelf and produced a plastic-wrapped package. "Score!"_

_Tanya echoed her triumph. "Squigglies," she proclaimed, holding up a package of noodles. "My favorite. How'd you know where to look?"_

"She's got mutant cheese-finding powers," Lorraine contributed, kicking off her sandals and placing her feet up on the table.

_"Do not even _joke_ about mutants. I'm so sick of it."_

_"Sor-_ree_. I thought your dad wasn't trying to blow them up anymore. What's he doing now, flipping burgers?"_

_"Don't I wish." Tanya removed a saucepan from the dish drainer. "There are _always_ more people wanting to build weapons of mass destruction, even if they're destructing people, not mutants. Hey, guys, what do you think of this? Tuna-noodle casserole, with cheese. My own recipe. Yummers, right?"_

_"Sounds good," Lorraine approved. She turned up the volume on the radio and started singing along with the _Moulin Rouge_ theme. "Kitchy-kitchy ya-ya ta-ta…"_

_"Think you could find another station?" The _Moulin Rouge_ song tended to get stuck in her brain like a malignant growth._

_"Find it yourself, bitch."_

_Tanya filled the pot with water and put it on the stove, then fiddled with the dial, straining to find familiar notes between static and Christina Aguilera, whom all three girls hated with a passion. "If we're 'beautiful in every single way'," she asked the speaker, "then don't any of us have boyfriends right now?" She thought about Webb Norris, the guy with whom she'd almost hooked up back in Wallglass, a definite hottie who, as it turned out, happened to have had a girlfriend the whole time. Now, she glanced at Vanessa, who had climbed back up onto the counter and was staring at her swinging legs. "Something wrong?"_

_"She's still thinking about Ricky," Lorraine stage-whispered._

_"He's a senior," Tanya pointed out. "Vanessa. I know you liked him, but…"_

_"You'll meet some guys when the next wave of class-trippers," Lorraine assured her._

_"It's not that," Vanessa said quietly._

_"Then what's up?" Tanya ran a hand through her hair, which was becoming less and less blonde as the weeks passed. She'd gotten tired of looking like a platinum clone of all the other girls at her school, and was seriously considering purple spikes next._

_"You said, 'Even if they're destructing people, not mutants.'"_

_"Yeah, I guess I did, didn't I?" She fiddled with the radio knob some more, found a really choice Mariah Carey song, and danced over to check on the water. _

_Vanessa blinked her blue-lidded eyes. "Aren't mutants people?"_

_"Not if you listen to the Mad Scientist." After noting that its surface was still as flat as a mirror, she washed, peeled, and began to slice the two carrots she'd removed from the vegetable drawer._

_"Yeah, but what if you _don't_ listen to the Mad Scientist?" Vanessa turned down the volume on the radio._

"Hey, I like that song," Tanya protested, but her friend was not listening and was wearing her therapist face. Vanessa's own parents were the types to push her into making Important Career Decisions before she got out of elementary school, and they'd been overjoyed when she'd announced her ambition to be a psychologist.

"You and Larry both have Issues," she declared now.

"Well, we knew that about him."

"I'm serious. It seems like everything you did since you got back from the middle of nowhere was some kind of effort to annoy your crazy father."

"We weren't trying to annoy him. We were trying to shock him back to reality."

"Says you."

"Maybe it's that complex," Lorraine suggested, dead-pan. "The one that's the opposite of Oedipus."

Tanya nearly snarfed up the carrot slice she'd been munching.

"Electra," Vanessa supplied, looking every bit as calm, as if she were actually considering it.

"That is so gross!" Tanya spluttered.

"I'm just saying."

"And even if it is true, which is not — ew, ew, ew — it doesn't really explain the way Larry's acting, though." Like anything ever could.

"Easy. He's making a play for attention. Any day now, he's going to come home on a motorcycle."

"His own or someone else's?"

"Doesn't matter. He runs around with that skinny little freak Doug Ramsey, and he goes out running in the middle of the night. He has a bumper sticker that says 'I Drive This Piece of Junk Because The Batmobile's In the Shop.' He's a budding weirdo, and he's so obviously doing it because he has a complex — not that kind of complex, don't start shrieking again — about not getting enough love when he was a munchkin. And he's just going to get weirder."

"I would say you're right," Tanya sighed. "But I don't think anyone in this family can get any weirder."


	6. Invisible Darkness

Chapter 5: Invisible Darkness

There was a darkness in the house. Not a visible darkness; the dark curtains had been removed and the somber wallpaper stripped down soon after they'd moved in five years ago. But as they strived to make the place as cheerful as possible, their very presence had infused it with the shadows of their own past. Since they were good people (the father was a successful writer for television, his wife taught at the elementary school and was never absent from town functions, and their daughter was smart and earnest and seemed to lack the cynical edge that most teenagers felt was their God-given right), it was a darkness that only a guest adept at reading the aura of an atmosphere would notice, that a few in the know (not that there were any of those in their new setting) would be able to understand, and that Violet Spencer, who knew its source all too well, couldn't miss.

After the day she'd had, it seemed even heavier than ever. She had anticipated that, and that's why she'd wanted to take the longest route home, putting it off for as long as possible. She already knew that neither of her parents would be back until that evening, and she would have to face the rest of the afternoon alone with nothing to distract her from her thoughts, or from the shouts of "Freak-lover!" that filled her ears whenever she tuned in to the silence. Which she tried not to do, turning up the radio as loud as she could while she unloaded her schoolbooks on the dining room table with one hand and took a bite of her peanut-butter-banana sandwich with the other. She smiled with recognition at the voice she heard.

_"Call me what you will now_

_Spit and stare at me now_

_Hit me with your taunts and your threats galore_

_'Cause there will come time_

_When I'm somebody_

_Someday I won't need to listen anymore…"_

Normally, Violet would probably have belted out "Somebody some-day-ay-ay!" along with her almost-sister-in-law, doing a little twirl over to the table. Losing herself in the music she heard (no matter what mood she was in) could be considered her one weakness, her one vice. She had a lot in common with Phoebe in that way, or so she liked to think.

Of course, she also had to deal with the plunge back into reality when her favorite songs ended. In this case, reality included the history notes she was supposed to be studying. Mr. Terrence had hinted, although not in so many words, that the final exam was going to be a real killer. "In-depth" was the teacher-friendly euphemism he had used, and all nineteen trivia-dazed students had groaned. All of them, Violet included, were doubtlessly glad to be almost rid of Mr. Terrence, who never explained things in ten words that could be explained in a hundred, and refused to stop and go back if someone had missed something, claiming it was that person's own fault. It was the one class that she hadn't even made the slightest effort to like. Chemistry, cool. English, fine. Geometry… at least it had been easy. But history? Not in a million years.

Before she could crack the books, though, the phone started shrilling, and she almost knocked her bag back onto the floor as she reached for it. "Hello?"

"Hi, can I talk to Violet?" a vaguely familiar, softly accented female voice asked.

"This is."

"It's Teresa."

She closed her eyes. "Hi."

"Hi. I just wanted to say, thanks for sticking up for me today."

Violet had known this was coming — people weren't being sarcastic when they talked about Teresa Rourke-Cassidy's "lovely personality" — but it was nice to hear all the same. "You're welcome." When she had caught Louis and his preppie friends (who proved that school bullies didn't come butch and pierced like Phoebe's legendary nemesis Jeff Price) yelling "Freak-lover!" and worse at Teresa in the hallway, she'd yelled at them to back off before she'd been able to stop herself. Once she'd done it, however, she'd been left with the feeling that she could say anything. Fortunately, it hadn't come to that. They had turned toward her, however, demanding what business it was of hers and giving Teresa time to slip away.

"I mean it. You'd think I would know how to take care of myself. Guess not. And it's not like I'm about to ask Brett to protect me." Her voice grew softer, as if the mention of her boyfriend calmed her somehow. "I don't even know how they knew."

"They probably know you went to the group on weekends."

"Yeah, that must be it," Teresa agreed. "Hey, speaking of which —"

_No, don't ask me. Please don't._

" — are you ever coming back? We missed you."

Violet sighed. "I don't know."

"You had some really good things to say," Teresa wheedled. "But I never heard your story. If you had one, I mean, a lot of kids were just there because they 'supported the cause.'"

"Whoo hoo," Violet said obligingly. "It's not that I didn't like it. I just wasn't sure whether it was the right…" She groped for a word. "The right environment for me."

"Okay. Well, we've been trying to work out a schedule for summer sessions, so if you feel like doing any more talking."

"Always. Listen, Teresa, I have to go and study now."

"Okay. Me, too, I guess. Thanks again, Vi. Ciao."

"'Bye." Violet hung up and sat back, but she didn't allow her eyes to travel to her books yet. _ It wasn't just that it wasn't the "right environment" for me_, she thought. _It's because sooner or later I would end up telling my story. And there are some things that nobody wants to remember, especially when it took moving to another state to forget them._


	7. Future Shock

A/N: I think we all saw this coming, didn't we?

Chapter 6: Future Shock

_Larry was removing books from his locker two days later when a hand grabbed his shoulder and whirled him around. He stopped himself from shouting out just in time._

_"Man, you're incredible!" Doug was beaming clear across his freckled face, and all five feet, five inches of him were practically crackling with energy._

_"I am?"_

_"It happened exactly the way you said it would. _Exactly_. She kept sneaking me looks all through biology yesterday, and after the bell rang, she came up to me and said that she turned him down because she was waiting for me to ask her, but I hadn't yet, so she was asking if I wanted to go with her!" He said all of this very fast._

_Larry blinked. "What?"_

_"Dani," Doug said, more slowly. "She asked me if I wanted to go to the prom with her, and it happened exactly the way you said, Bad Breath Alan and everything. How'd you do it?" The last reaction he expected from the other boy was laughter. "What's so funny?"_

_"You're playing with me, right? Like I was joking the other day."_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"When I said that Dani was going to ask you, I was just kidding around." Not that he'd actually put it past her to break tradition, but… "So you're trying to mess with me by saying I was right. Right?"_

_Doug's eyes widened slightly. "No, I swear to God it really happened," he said earnestly._

_"It did?" _

_"Yeah, it did! What's the matter? You look like you're getting ready to cough up a hairball." His expression changed from bewilderment to a sudden understanding. "I gotcha," he said._

_"What?"_

_"You're freaked because _you knew what would happen before it happened_. It's okay. I won't tell anyone."_

_"You won't tell anyone _what_?"_

_"That you're a mutant."_

_"I'm _not_…" Larry began, then shook his head. "I'm not. Got it?"_

_Doug took a step back. "Are you going to hit me?"_

_"Am I… no, of course not." He was only puzzled for a second — Tanya had told him how one of the girls in her class had asked her friend — with the unfortunate name of Brenda Trout — if she thought she might be a mutant. Brenda hadn't talked to her for a week as a result. "I probably heard Alan tell one of his friends that he was planning on making a play for Dani."_

_"Alan doesn't _have_ any friends."_

_"Cruel but true," Larry admitted. "Then maybe I…"_

_"Don't make yourself late for homeroom while you think of a f*cking _excuse_. I gotta go catch Greg before the bell rings. He has the English homework from last night." And he was gone._

_Larry slammed his locker shut. It wasn't until he'd zipped his backpack that he realized his hands were shaking like mad._

_He tried to remember an instance when he could have overheard Alan planning to ask Dani. Or heard her planning to talk to Doug (which would make more sense; for a girl with less money than most, unusual fashion sense, and no "pedigree", she was uncannily popular). He could think of none._

_Instead, the memory of another conversation, taking place two months earlier, occurred to him. The voice that he heard was his own, sounding a bit more confident than he'd felt at the time, and a lot more confident than he was feeling now._

"What if I turn out to be a mutant? What if I could, I don't know, see into the future, or something like that?"

_A coincidence, those words, or something more?_

"I know it could happen, and I'm not scared."

_That had pretty much been a lie, and he had been pretty sure that his father knew it. Of course he'd been scared, and he still was. It wasn't too hard to imagine for most teenagers — the smart ones, anyway — the nightmare wasn't that the freaks would hurt them. It was that they themselves might have to live with some power that would change them, maybe even kill them, emotionally if not literally. It was what kept them awake at night, what made them analyze the behaviors of their parents, their friends, wondering how they'd take the news. He knew that Tanya felt it. ("I don't think that's going to happen," he'd said to her, trying to convince them both that the unthinkable was just that — unthinkable.) He even thought that Angelina might, although it was kind of hard to imagine her being afraid of anything._

"I need to know that the people who were always there for me are going to stand by me no matter what. Not send killer robots after me."

_Well, at least there was no chance of _that_ happening. "Thank God for small favors," he told the picture of her that he'd taped to the inside of his locker door. But Sentinels or no Sentinels, the reason that he was trying to convince himself so hard that the incident of two days ago had been a coincidence wasn't because he thought it _had_ to be. It was because he was wouldn't let himself think of what would happen if it _wasn't_._

_As if cued by the end of his interior monologue, the warning bell for homeroom rang, blissfully silencing the small voice inside him that had piped up, "But what about the fire?"_

_His track coach last year had given the team a piece of what Larry had thought at the time was unusual advice: "Imagine your feet sounding out a word while you run. A rhythm. It'll help you pace yourselves better."_

_Pretending that you would be late for a class sounded like a better way to get yourself going. But now, as he raced down the hall, he tried to match his feet to the rhythm of one four-syllable word: _Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence.


	8. Golden Girl

Chapter 7: Golden Girl

The ringing of the final bell was drowned out by the shrieking and cheering of several hundred liberated high school students. The shouted chorus of "We don't need to education" filled the halls as they grabbed their report cards and made for the doors.

"Am I glad that's over," Teresa sighed even as she allowed Brett to come up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist.

"How'd you do?" he asked. "Straight A's again?"

She blushed. "Yeah."

"Brain," he teased.

"Jock," she came right back. "You know my mom would kill me if I got anything less."

"She's kind of strict, isn't she?"

"You know it." Understatement of the year, that was. "You know, she grew up in a really strict family, and I guess they didn't want her to be educated." Teresa and her mom were close, no doubt about that — she knew she could consider herself lucky, considering some of the horror stories she'd heard from her classmates — but there were some subjects on which Maeve Rourke tended to go to extremes. The importance of not going into detail about the terminally absent Sean Cassidy was one. (She had asked what the harm would be in knowing what he was like for… it must have been years… before she had caught on to that rule — or let herself admit it.) Schoolwork was another.

_And I'm going to be a senior next year_, she reminded herself as Brett put an arm around her and began guiding her out to his car. She was dreading next year, when the pressure would be on to get Princeton to accept her (_so I can get a good education and stay under her thumb_, she thought, then immediately hated herself for thinking it). Yet they hadn't even brought it up. In fact, whenever her mother remarked on how fast she was growing up, she knew that they were both thinking the same thing: _She's almost out of the woods._

_She only wants what's best for me_, Teresa told herself. _And let's face it, I'm not too thrilled with the idea of turning out to be a mutant now, either. And I'm worried about all the political crises going on — what does it mean for people who support the freaks against our better judgment? — but I'm not _scared_. Not sure why. _

"What're you thinking about?" Brett wanted to know.

"Nothing really."

"Want to stop for ice cream before I drop you off?"

"Sure."

**

He bought her a double espresso-crunch cone, which she loved, and a banana-nut for himself. "Don't drip all over my car," he warned her when they were back outside. Then he looked up suddenly. "Everett Thomas at ten o'clock," he muttered in her ear. "Wonder what he wants."

Teresa looked in the direction in which her boyfriend had jerked his chin. "To say hi. I know him." She waved at the tall, bespectacled, black teenager who was still clad in his Cramer Academy uniform. "I can't believe you have school until next week," she greeted him.

"I can't believe I let them talk me into taking the night off," he replied. "It being Friday and everything. Nothing to do, though."

Against Brett's pointed Look, Teresa told him, "There's a party at Jem Capshaw's. Brett and I are going."

"Who else is?" As she verbalized a list of names associated with the baseball team and the cheer squad. "I invited Violet Spencer, but she can't come. Her brother and his girlfriend are coming to visit."

"She never told us she had a brother."

"I didn't know it either," Teresa admitted. Violet had said quite a few things at meetings, but not very many of them had been personal.

"Did you find out if she was ever coming back?"

"She didn't say," Teresa replied truthfully enough. "Listen, I have to get home. See you tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," he replied, and turned to leave.

"What was that about?" Brett asked once they were in the car.

"He's just hung up on this girl we both know."

"I know Violet, too. She _only_ helped the basketball team win last winter. But aren't the girls at Cramer supposed to be gorgeous? And rich?"

"And also looking for guys who are gorgeous and rich. Ev's there on scholarship."

"I feel kind of sorry for him," Brett remarked.

"Oh?"

"He's not as rich as the other preppies, he's smart, and he hangs around with that mutant-advocate group. He's asking for it."

"Hey, watch what you say about smart mutant advocates!" she retorted, pretending to swing at him.

"Not while I'm driving! I'm just _saying_."

"Well, just _say_ something more supportive about my friends next time."

"I'll make an effort." When they were finally in front of her house, "Pick you up at eight-thirty."

"You know it." She kissed him lightly and opened the car door, then started up the front walk. _Exit Grayer High's own Girl Whom Female Classmates Would Most Like To Be, _ she thought with an inner sigh. _Enter good daughter Teresa, who steps out of line from her loving mother — and I do love her, I really do — over her dead body. _


	9. Don't Panic

Chapter 8: Don't Panic

Mrs. Garfield has left her husband for Hans, the man who grooms her poodle and from whom Mrs. Garfield has been getting a fair amount of intimate attention herself. She shows up at his penthouse on a rainy night, one nylon stocking hanging out of her suitcase. She's toting a dog carrier in the other hand.

"I couldn't stand one more minute with him!"

"Slow down, Marlene. Tell me what happened. He doesn't… know?"

"Of course he knows. I wouldn't be here if he didn't know! Well, I probably would be, but not like this."

"You are beautiful no matter what you look like, Marlene."

"Hans…"

"So you have left him? For good?"

"For good. All those years, I watched my marriage lose whatever it once had, and I didn't even know what was missing until now."

_What he saw next made it very, very hard for Larry to listen to Mrs. Garfield lecture about _The Crucible_. Even though, considering its subject matter, the play should have interested him a lot more than it actually was._

_He still had no idea how he'd faced his dad and Tanya at the dinner table the night before. He was pretty sure that at that point, he was still trying to convince himself that it was all a coincidence. But sometime between then and now — and what _was_ he doing in school, anyway? — the evidence had seemed to mount until it pointed to a truth that made him want to run from whatever room he was in, except he knew it wouldn't do him any good, because he couldn't run from himself._

I can see the future.

_He wasn't over-dramatizing. He wished he was. Or even that the… visions… or whatever they were… were the result of some sort of mental illness, because they could treat those, and sometimes, you recovered from them._

I can see the future. Which means I have some sort of mental power. Which means that I'm a mutant, which means…

_His head had started to spin. Kent Santos, who was reading the Reverend's part, leaned over and asked if he was okay. He wasn't sure what he said, and had given up all hope of concentrating on _The Crucible_._

Which means that I'm a mutant_. He couldn't seem to get past that one particular fact. The only mutant he had known his almost-seventeen years was Stephen Spencer, who went out with Angelina's sister._

Dear God. Angelina. What am I going to say to her?

_Stephen was friendly and sometimes hilarious and obviously crazy about Phoebe. He wore T-shirts with joke sayings printed on them, like half the guys in school, except he was never seen without one — it was his trademark. And he could read minds, except Angelina had informed Larry — _assured_ him — that he didn't like to do it all that often. All of this was proof that not all mutants were dangerous, power-hungry fiends as Dr. Trask had taught both his children to believe._

I told him that he was wrong. I told him that if things like that could happen to good people — people like Stephen — then it could happen to me or Tanya. But that didn't mean I thought it was _going_ to.

_Kent touched his arm and asked again if he was okay. With that touch came a series of wild images that he couldn't place his classmate in and which had no meaning for him, but had no doubt that they applied to Kent's future._

_"Fine, uh-huh, fine, I'm fine." _Did I really just say that?__

_"Mr. Trask, is there a problem?" Mrs. Garfield spoke the words in exact the same tone in which she'd asked the question the other day._

_"I'm okay, Marl — I mean, Mrs. Garfield."_

_The class tittered._

_"What was the point of Abigail's story about seeing the witches dancing in the woods?"_

_Damn, he knew this. What _was_ the point?_

_"It's fairly obvious _if_ you've done the reading."_

_"Um… the witches dancing in the woods…" he floundered. Was it supposed to be some kind of metaphor? Did the woods represent something? No, that was that poem, the one that ended with "And miles to go before I sleep." _Does your husband know now, Marlene? When is he going to start to guess? Tomorrow? The next day? In a couple of months? If you knew he was going to find out, would you still be seeing Hans?__

_"Miss Potts, do you know the right answer?" the teacher asked._

_Jennifer Potts nodded. "She knew that if she reported magic among the other villagers instead of her and her friends, then the reverend would concentrate on them instead. She didn't know that she was helping to start a witch hunt."_

Nobody ever does_, Larry thought. His head was starting to whirl again, the room becoming blurry, voices stretching into slow-motion murmurs. _Oh, not again, he had time to think. Not twice in the same class, it isn't fair, it isn't fair…__

She turns to him, pale skin paler against the black dress. "It's not your fault," she says. He tells her that he thinks it must be. "How?" she demands. "He made a lot of people angry, and…" Seeing the look on his face, she gapes. "No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way." He asks how she did mean it. "I don't know. Do you think…" He tells her that maybe it would be best if they stayed away from each other for a while. She's crying, tears slipping out from the corners of her eyes. He can see himself, a somber figure in a dark suit, reflected in them, and beyond that, a kind of relief, an understanding of why this is best, that he can't fathom.

Behind him, someone else is sobbing. Tanya.

_From above him, or off to the side, a crash, then a thud as if something's falling to the floor._

"He died for the Cause," Graydon Creed says.

"He was our bravest warrior," Delia Foxworth puts in.

_Someone screams._

He stares at all their faces, not comprehending what they're trying to tell him.

_"Will all of you stand back and give him air?"_

Their faces.

_"Larry, are you all right? Can you hear me?"_

_Their faces were circled around him, above him. He blinked. He was lying on the floor of his English classroom. Faces were staring down at him, mouths open, long hair hanging in his face. Mrs. Garfield wedged herself between Kent and Jennifer. "Are you all right?" she asked again._

_Larry nodded truthfully. Suddenly he was feeling perfectly normal except for the ache in his head where it had hit the floor, the sinking feeling in his stomach, and the realization that if he didn't get out of there soon, he might go crazy. Short trip._

_"I'm going to write you a pass to the nurse."_

_"No." He sat up. "Mrs. Garfield, I think I need to go home."_

_"No way," she said. "Sorry. You passed out in class, in case you don't get that. I'm taking your life and my job in my hands if I let you leave now. Go see Ms. Alexander, and she'll see if you're all right to drive home." She scribbled out a pass. "Scoot, Mr. Trask. Now."_

_Larry scooted. Behind him, he could hear Mrs. Garfield telling everyone to settle down._

**

_Ms. Alexander had him hold an ice pack against the back of his head for twenty minutes, peered into his eyes with a bright light, asked an assortment of questions, and declared that she was calling someone to pick him up._

_"There isn't anyone," he protested. "It's just me and my sister and my dad, and he's working. It's only a few minutes from here to my house." Actually, it was more like ten minutes, but he was anxious to get out of there. "If I start feeling weird, I can always pull over."_

_"Another fifteen minutes, then. Then we'll decide for sure. Lie back and close your eyes."_

_He complied with the first part of her suggestion, but he didn't close his eyes. He was afraid to._

**

_There was always something surreal about being home when he was supposed to be at school. The sun seemed brighter, the noises from outside louder, the quiet inside the apartment heavier, the feeling of not knowing what to do with himself much stronger. And it went double for this afternoon. The silence made it all too easy to finish the thought he'd begun in class._

Homo superior._ That's what they called themselves. Bull. Superior — that was why they got beaten up just for trying to breathe the same oxygen as normal people, right? That was why the tabloids were blabbing about how this or that celebrity might be hiding the "shocking truth" from their fans. (And wouldn't they have a field day with this one?) That was why the _other_ words were found spray-painted on walls, the ones that nobody bothered to wash off._

That's why people kill mutants. That's why someone who _lives right here in this house with me_, someone who's _supposed to be looking out for us_, kills mutants, or at least wants them dead. Because they're _superior_. Yeah, yeah, that must be it!

_But of course that was it._

Maybe nobody has to know._ That was stupid. From the way he'd freaked out in the middle of class that day, how long would it take for someone — probably the _wrong_ someone — to find out?_

At the very least, _he_ doesn't have to know._ That would be the safest thing, wouldn't it? The Mad Scientist had gone postal at the very suggestion of either of his children being among the freaks. The thought of what he would do if it were true was completely unimaginable. Kick Larry out of the house, throw things, possibly call in the Friends of Humanity on him — no matter how absurd it might seem to an outsider, none of those things seemed to be beyond him in a situation like this._

_"Tanya, don't panic, but I have to tell you something," he said aloud to his empty room. "Doug, man, you were right. But you understand why I didn't want to believe it, don't you?" The answer, in all probability, would be no. "Angel…" He left that thought unfinished. "I can't believe this is happening." He wasn't sure who he was talking to there. "Please, God or Somebody, tell me this isn't happening."_


	10. Family Ties

Chapter 9: Family Ties

Violet dragged off her school clothes, bidding a final goodbye to that day — and that year. _God almighty, I'm free at last!_ From the closet, she removed with a kind of reverence the sundress she'd bought a couple of weeks ago, dragged it over her head, then studied her reflection. She looked… well… normal. _Which I am_, she told herself. _I know that, even if they aimed to make me forget it sometimes._

"The group" had been a support group for high school students whose loved ones happened to be mutants. It had been launched late in winter by a guidance counselor from Cramer Academy (the snobby prep school for kids who _were_ going to attend Princeton, or else) and was held weekends in a perpetually chilly church basement. Violet had gone to one session on suggestion from Charity, more than a little skeptical.

The kids were of all shapes and sizes, with all different reasons for being there. The ones like Everett What's-His-Name, who had no connections but fully (and very vocally) supported equal rights for mutants, were actually a minority. Most of the people there, some of whom Violet saw every day at school, had been hiding some major skeletons in their closets.

For someone who had spent the last five years playing by her parents' rules of discretion, had moved for the second time in six years to get away from the press, from the gossip, from the memories, the constant revelations and confrontations were shocking. How could people be so… open… about this? It was all wrong.

_Your group are all outcasts like you, aren't they, Becca?_

_What plans do you and Josie have for the future, Felix?_

Violet personally thought some of the questions had been a little nosy, but the things they talked about — from the conflicting loyalties that resulted from discovering someone you were close to wasn't who (or what) you thought they were, to the mounds of tabloid attention mutants were getting — interested her, even though she tended to blush sometimes at how stupid she sounded.

But that would have been nothing compared to what would have happened if someone had goaded her into spilling everything.

_You're Violet, right? The younger sister?_

_Yes._

_Let's get your perspective on this. Did you feel in any way… different from your friends at school after you found out about Stephen's situation?_

_I wasn't really thinking about them. I was thinking about us._

_Your family, you mean? How would you describe your relationship to him prior to this incident?_

_What are you talking about?_

_Did he ever get angry at you?_

_Sure._

_Angry enough to strike back at you without realizing the consequences?_

_Are you crazy?_

_Do you consider yourself lucky now?_

_Violet, get back inside! You vultures, how dare you?_

Her mother had actually used the word "vultures."

Five years and several hundred miles between her and those memories, and still they insisted on haunting her. She had been right to leave the group; she preferred the anonymity of the chat room anyway. Same issues, same types of alliances, nobody to call her on it at school the next day, and no guilt. Her parents hadn't a clue about it; they didn't approve of Internet-based friendships, thought that they were shallow at their most innocent, becoming more and more dangerous the more intense the relationship became.

But she hadn't told them the truth, either.

It was none of their business.

_Of course you're thinking about it now_, she told herself. _You're seeing them tonight, and you're going to have to make absolutely sure that you don't say anything that might send Mom and Daddy over the edge. Jump over that bridge when you come to it and take a good look at yourself. Does this dress "work?"_ It was a new one, summery and strappy, and she'd been waiting for a chance to wear it. Not that she usually bothered with clothes or makeup (she couldn't think of any beauty technique that made one's nose look smaller) or her hair (was and always would be mousy; her parents felt the same way about the dyes she oh-so-casually brushed against in the drugstore aisles as they did about their phantom online predators), but she wanted to show off for Phoebe, who always had the coolest clothes.

"Violet! They're here!"

She tossed off a grin at her reflection. Much better. "Coming!"

A/N: So a couple of chapters from now, we get to find out if Phoebe said yes. I hope the past-vs.-present storyline isn't too confusing for you.

**Neva doesn't want to confuse people? Has hell frozen over?**

What was I thinking when I took Stephen on as a muse?

**That I was damn sexy?**

You're _my_ character. Don't be perverse.


	11. Forward Thinking

Chapter 10: Forward Thinking

_The slam of the door signaled Tanya's arrival. "My turn to cook," she greeted him._

_"I hope it'll be better than — did you call that a casserole?"_

_"Hah-hah. I heard you freaked out in the middle of English today," she said as she flopped onto the couch. "Are you okay?"_

_"Yeah." Larry braced himself for a rush of images that he wouldn't understand until after they had already happened to her, but nothing happened. Slowly, slowly, he let his breath out._

_"Vanessa's, like, saying you're on drugs and that's why it happened."_

_"Where'd she hear _that_?"_

_"From Brenda. And Brenda heard it from Trevor, and I don't know where _he_ heard it." She tilted her head and stared at him. "You aren't, are you? You'd tell me, wouldn't you?"_

_"Of course I would." He didn't even have to lie._

_"I'm not a kid anymore," she reminded him._

_"I know."_

_"I'm fourteen."_

_"I know that, too."_

_"You can tell me stuff."_

_That, he wasn't so sure about. Tanya was part of a group of girls that equated status with the quality of the rumors a person discovered and spread, and he'd lived with her long enough to know about her ear for gossip. Yet she, of all people, would know how serious this was, right? She would understand the importance of keeping it inside the family, right? "Even if you knew you could never tell anyone?"_

_"Maybe _especially_ if I knew I couldn't tell anyone," Tanya said cheerfully. Then her smile faded. "Why?"_

_"I mean _nobody_. Not Lorraine, not Vanessa, not whatever upperclassman you're doodling into a heart this week. Not even Dad."_

_"I'm guessing this isn't hypothetical," she said slowly._

_"You got it." He took a deep breath, let it out. _Finding is better than fearing, it has to be._ "Remember when…" and here he hesitated, as if just saying the word would send them stomping toward their house. "Remember when the Sentinels captured that metal guy?"_

_"Sure."_

_"Well, Dad called me to tell me the news, and I got really mad at him for some reason. I started saying all this stuff about how mutants weren't all evil and how would he feel if it was one of us, just like you asked me. Right?"_

_"Bet he didn't like that."_

_"He didn't," Larry said grimly, remembering._

_"Is _that_ what you have to tell me? 'Cause I've heard it all before. You've been fighting with him since we got back."_

_"No, that isn't what I've got to tell you. And that's not the end of the story." _Finding better than fearing, better than fearing, better than fearing._ "I had this really freaky dream that night."_

_She nodded sympathetically. "I had a lot of those after the car accident."_

_He stared at her. "How would you even remember that?"_

_"He says I did. I believe him. I have to sort of count on you guys to know what she was like."_

_"I don't remember a whole lot, either," Larry admitted. "I was only five." His memories of his mother were more like a collage, flashes of her voice and frozen images in photos. Tanya was starting to look a lot like her (except for the hair, which she'd grown out). A _whole_ lot._

_"What was your nightmare about?"_

_"Oh. Yeah." Damn, he had just gone a whole minute without thinking about his problem. "I dreamed that all the Sentinels, and everything in the lab, caught on fire." He let this sentence hang in the air for a second. "And… well… I guess you know what happened a couple of weeks later." She had sat bolt upright and was watching him even more closely, but she didn't say anything. "Lately, it's been happening a lot. Just dreams at first, but now I'm starting to see things in the daytime, too." He paused, then took the plunge. "Things that haven't happened yet. So far, only a couple of them have come true, but…" He looked right at her and didn't stop. "But I think it means that I'm… uh… a mutant." There. He'd said it._

_And she was smiling._

_He stared at her in amazement. "What's so funny?"_

_"You're joking, right?" Tanya asked, shaking her head._

_It was the same thing he'd asked Doug. "I'm really not."_

_"Yes, you are. You're joking. You're messing with me. Don't try it on him. You know he's not going to think it's funny."_

_"I'm not kidding."_

_"You are _not_ a mutant," she said. "You're not."_

_If he said "Yes, I am," it would come off sounding totally fake. So he didn't say anything._

_"Prove it."_

_He'd been afraid of this. "I can't. It's not something I can control. It just happens."_

_"How convenient. You're _not_," she repeated. "C'mon, I know you. You're so the kind of person who'd make something like this up. Vanessa explained it to me. You're trying to make a statement by being as totally creepy as you can."_

_"If I was trying to make a statement, I'd dye my hair green or orange and hang out in the parking lot during class. I'd get an outrageous tattoo or become a Communist." She turned her head to the side, as if she was deliberately trying not to look at him. "I wouldn't say that I was a mutant. Not me. Not now. Not unless it was true. Please, please don't tell him."_

_She stood up. "I have to go."_

_"Go where?"_

_"To my room. I don't know. Somewhere. I have to go." She ran out of the room. A minute later, he could hear loud music issuing from behind the closed door of her bedroom._

_"Well, that went well," he said to himself. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, thinking suddenly of the funeral that he'd glimpsed when he'd collapsed in the classroom. If he tried, could he see that scene again? Replay it, like an image in a movie, or like a fortune-teller calling up a specific prediction for a customer? An image of himself in a gaudy turban, hunched over a crystal ball, rose up instead. _Larry the Magnificent sees all, knows all, tells all!_ Not something that was going to happen, at least he hoped not. He felt more like Larry the Severely Freaked Out._

_Anyway, he didn't want to see the whole thing again because he took pleasure in witnessing someone's funeral. He just wanted to know if there was any way he could maybe control this. Ever._

Who was the "someone"?

_ His future self had been concerned at the moment with what Angelina was telling him — and the more he tried to recall that part of it, the more it slipped away from him. But he clearly remembered what the two Friends of Humanity had said to him. _He died for the Cause. He was our bravest warrior.

_His father. Had to be. _

_The date that his mind had seemed to spit out at him was two and a half years from now._

_He bolted for the bathroom and was sick. As he filled a cup with water to rinse out his mouth, another vision filled the space in front of and inside him. When he blinked, it was gone, and it was easy to say it had been just his imagination. He hoped it was. "She wouldn't." _Talking to myself again._ "She wouldn't tell him. She said she wouldn't."_

_A few minutes later, he was on his way out the door again, his backpack over his shoulder. It was important not to think too much. Otherwise, he'd just panic again. He felt kind of bad to be doing this to Tanya, instead of staying and trying to comfort her, but what would he say? And why did he think that times had changed, and he could actually prevent her from doing something?_

_He didn't leave without a trace, however. Of the two messages he left, one was a note on the kitchen table, saying that he would be back the next day at the latest. The other was a message on Angelina's answering machine. "Angel, it's me. Except me a little earlier than you did. I'll explain when I get there." He'd hung up quickly before he could do something that he'd most definitely regret later. Like say "I love you" for instance._


	12. Prodigal

Chapter 11: Prodigal  
  
  
  
Growing up, Stephen had become fully convinced that there was no such place as New Jersey. He had never been there, didn't know anyone from there, and couldn't remember any major historical event that had happened there. As far as he was concerned, it was just a mistake some long-ago mapmaker had made and was too embarrassed to correct. Or part of a conspiracy.  
  
  
  
So when his parents and Violet moved to New Jersey soon after he'd left for college, his first reaction was to wonder how exactly that was possible.  
  
  
  
And yet, here they were.  
  
  
  
And here he was.  
  
  
  
Part of him had been dreading this visit. He wasn't exactly on bad terms with his family, but, among other things, they thought he was taking a big risk by keeping company with someone who had such a widespread reputation. Sometimes he doubted they realized that he'd grown up.  
  
  
  
As if it had been only yesterday, he could hear his mother instructing them, "That means no rude remarks, no looking bored, and no saying _anything_ that might upset them. That was pretty much the policy of all family visits. He didn't even think he could count on them to lend his support if the worst came to past, the prospective government measure that he didn't even dare discuss with Phoebe.  
  
  
  
He'd had a mind-blowingly crazy hope that if he asked her to marry him in front of all those people, she couldn't not say yes. But all the sassy calm that she possessed when she was in front of an audience had vanished in that single second, and she had — still in front of every single one of Mira's guests — stammered that she didn't know what to say. Later, when they'd gotten home, he'd realized within half a minute that she'd seen right through his plan.   
  
  
  
_You really embarrassed me back there._  
  
  
  
_I know. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking of embarrassing you._  
  
  
  
_So what were you thinking?_  
  
  
  
_I was thinking that I wanted you to say yes._  
  
  
  
_For real?_  
  
  
  
_For real. Did you think that I wasn't serious?_  
  
  
  
_No, I knew you were okay, forget that, I didn't know what you were. Maybe part of me thought you were just trying to make a big show of things — I know you do it, Stephen, don't try to deny it — and you weren't really thinking about what you were asking._  
  
  
  
_I've been thinking about it a _lot_. Don't think you always know what's going on inside my head._  
  
  
  
_It's only fair._  
  
  
  
Thankfully, the potential fight hadn't turned into anything worse, and the conversation had ended with her kissing him and saying that she wanted to keep talking about it "sometime later." And he knew that he would have no choice but to hold her to it.  
  
  
  
But all that vanished — poof! — as Violet came barreling into the hallway. Stephen didn't even have to force himself to grin; he found himself smiling without meaning to. "Hey, gorgeous."  
  
  
  
She really was. He knew she thought she was too tall, her hair was too mousy and coarse, and that her nose was too big, but she'd actually had a lot more luck with her hair than he'd had with his, and besides, she had large dark eyes, long lashes, and a great smile. It showed now — she was grinning from ear to ear as she hugged them both. "I'm so glad you came."  
  
  
  
"I'm glad we came, too," Phoebe said, smiling nervously at Charity as if this really were a standard meet-the-parents interview, as if the two families hadn't known each other for years.  
  
  
  
"As am I," Charity said, returning her smile and moving forward to kiss Stephen's cheek. "Your father's in his office, working on a screenplay for a new movie."  
  
  
  
"A movie?" Stephen repeated. "What kind of movie?"  
  
  
  
"I'm sure he'll tell you all about it," She smiled again. "Dinner's about ready."  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
_So far, so good_, Violet thought as she peered at the circle of faces from over her soup bowl. They had already covered the subjects of how excited Phoebe must be for her upcoming music tour and how amazing it was that the two of them were officially out of school. Now they had moved on to the certainty that Stephen would, indeed, find a steady job soon. "I wouldn't mind working in a radio station," he was saying.  
  
  
  
"'Hey, Mister Deejay," Phoebe sang, wiggling her shoulders.  
  
  
  
"Who's that?" Darren asked, frowning. "The Spice Girls?"  
  
  
  
"Madonna," Violet corrected him. "Dad, do you even know who the Spice Girls are?"  
  
  
  
Darren shrugged helplessly. "They're the ones who sing about what a girl wants, right?" When everyone groaned, he demanded to know if they liked his "sitcom dad" imitation. He had moved from soap operas to prime-time in the last few years, trying out his talents on everything from _Seventh Heaven_ (still going strong) to new developments like _Prodigal_, which was, among other things, about some loser of a guy who drops out of college, comes home, and starts making life miserable for his family. The guy playing the loser was actually pretty cute, and her dad's writing was a huge improvement on the way the season had been progressing so far. And at least he wasn't associated with _Nebula Vista_ anymore. Now, he said, he was working for a screenplay for a movie about a cop who solved crimes with the help of a hyper-intelligent kangaroo.  
  
  
  
"Got a boyfriend yet, Vi?" Phoebe wanted to know.  
  
  
  
"Nope. New Jersey boys have snot for brains and giant poles up their asses."  
  
  
  
"Violet Gertrude" Charity's voice rose in warning.  
  
  
  
"What? It's true." Violet turned to her brother. "Hey, Stevie, could you"  
  
  
  
"Here." He handed her the plate of rolls.  
  
  
  
"Thanks." She stuck out her tongue at him and saw her parents exchange a Look. _Oh, God_, she thought. _Grow up_.  
  
  
  
"Phoebe, how is Joanne?" Charity asked.  
  
  
  
"She's fine. She says it's weird to be doing the mom thing all over again." Joanne's latest husband was divorced, with full custody of his two children: sixteen-year-old Kendall, who favored shaved heads and rap music consisting largely of swears directed at the world in general; twelve-year-old Margaret, who was anything but subtle about comparing Joanne to her real mother; and seven-year-old Ben, who had been caught at least once hiding in the dryer.  
  
  
  
"And are either you still in touch with any of your old friends?"  
  
  
  
"Amanda's living in the city, too," Stephen spoke up. "We see her and Kurt sometimes — usually when she's not flying out of the country."  
  
  
  
"Flying?" Darren repeated.  
  
  
  
"On an airplane. She's a flight attendant."  
  
  
  
"Oh."  
  
  
  
Violet had liked Kurt, the one time she had actually met him. He'd been the first blue, fuzzy mutant she'd ever laid eyes on, but past experience had taught her (make that, _forced her_) to look beyond differences. But he'd actually _bowed_ when he saw her, and said, "So you're the sanest member of this family, ja?" eliciting a giggle from her and a frown from Charity before she demanded to know what he and the other two were doing in their kitchen. Fearing the worst. She had never met his girlfriend, but kind of got the feeling, from Stephen's remarks, that Amanda's DNA registered as normal as mashed potatoes, and that it had been all too easy for her and Kurt to make it work. Some people had all the luck.  
  
  
  
"Are you staying behind when Phoebe goes on tour?" Darren was asking Stephen.  
  
  
  
"I was thinking of going with her, actually."  
  
  
  
"Are you sure that's wise?"  
  
  
  
"We didn't really give any thought to how wise it was," Phoebe said, a little too sharply.  
  
  
  
"The tabloids would be all over you."  
  
  
  
"I've done a pretty good job of keeping them away so far."  
  
  
  
"And what if they recognize the pop star's mysterious beau?" Charity jumped in. "And see the face of the dangerous mutant who mentally assaulted some Friends of Humanity muscle five years ago?"  
  
  
  
_Not now_, Violet prayed. What was wrong with them? Couldn't everyone be under the same roof together without it turning into a big angsty confrontation? Violet had been a Harry Potter fan since time out of mind, and when things were at their worst, the Dursleys had nothing on her parents.  
  
  
  
"I don't believe this," Phoebe snapped. "Stephen and I are grownups, Charity. We can make our own decisions."  
  
  
  
Stephen was apparently in complete agreement. "I can't believe that you'd bring that up now, Mom."  
  
  
  
"You sound like a kid trying to keep his parents from telling embarrassing stories about him to his new girlfriend!" Charity retorted. "Do you realize what's at stake here? First you talk about getting a job where everyone knows who you are, and now you're talking about being part of a celebrity's entourage. You haven't learned anything. You never had any shame!"  
  
  
  
"Damn straight!" he retorted. "Why can't you wake up? I have my whole life ahead of me, and I want to spend it doing things the way I would have if I hadn't been what I am! And being with Phoebe while she does what she wants to do with _her_ life is part of that. Besides, if the Mutant Registration Act carries, it won't even matter." Charity gasped, her eyes immediately turning to Violet. "Oh, Vi knows already. She heard about it online."  
  
  
  
_No, not now, not now_. Violet squeezed her eyes shut, wishing more than anything that she had gone to Jem's party, where she could dance, gorge on ruffled potato chips, and avoid geeky Cramer boys like Everett Thomas. Be a normal girl, and avoided this whole horrible situation. Of course, she was pretty sure it would have come up even if she hadn't been there.  
  
  
  
"If it carries," Stephen went on, "everyone will have 'normal' or 'freak' stamped on all of their ID. I'll be on file on every database in the country as the scum of the earth."  
  
  
  
"Which is exactly why —"  
  
  
  
"And if it does happen, we'll deal with it," Phoebe said firmly. "Just like we've dealt with everything else. The Sentinels. The Friends of Humanity. Xavier." The name hung like a thundercloud over the table. "Throwing what he did back in his face was incredibly inconsiderate of you. I thought we could maybe get together and have a good time like civilized people. Like _normal_ people. Silly me."  
  
  
  
"I don't believe this," Charity said to no one in particular. "He whines on about how we were never really there for him, and when we try to look after him, he tells us to butt out. No wonder the government wants to keep mutants in line. It's hard enough to figure them out as it is!"  
  
  
  
Stephen stood up so abruptly that he almost knocked over his chair. "Come on, Phoebe. We're leaving. Vi, I'm sorry."  
  
  
  
But Violet's chair had long since been empty.  
  



	13. Life As We Know It

Chapter 12: Life As We Know It

_Somewhere in the midst of the madness, logic intruded and told him that if he left for Wallglass now, night would have fallen by the time he got there. He still expected to wake up every second, but now that hope was a little less strong, more a wish than a belief._

_He passed a large group of eighth-graders standing outside the Air and Space Museum, and remembered how he and his friends used to observe the class-trippers — making a game of guessing where they came from, how long they'd been there, and even what their schedule was going to be like. He himself had always been pretty good at guessing, while Kent Santos had once embarrassed himself in front of a group of locals whom he'd assumed were out of town. Clancy had actually met the girl of his dreams, Harriet, while he was trying to get her class's origins out of her. Doug, through careful interrogation and earnest schoolboy charm, had gotten three out of three more times than anyone else._

_It had gotten almost unbearably hot, more like August than May. The sun was still shining; the sky hadn't clouded over ominously just because he had realized that his life would never be the same. Lightning hadn't struck. All the normal humans in the world had gone on with their own lives just as they always had, except that the person who had every right to be one of them, whose life depended on his being one of them wasn't one of them anymore._

_He parked in front of Doug's house — which was located in a considerably older part of town, and it showed — and realized too late that he was knocking a little too frantically. _Please be home. Please be home.

_Doug was home. He answered the door with the cordless phone wedged between his shoulder and his head. "Gotta go. Someone's here." Pause. "What do you mean, tell them to go away?" Pause. "Right, I got it. Ha, ha." Pause. "Yes, I miss you already, too." He made a kissing noise into the phone and hung up. "What's shaking?"_

_Larry had been practicing all kinds of replies to that question: explanations, witty remarks, cryptic excuses — anything, he realized now, except the actual truth. What finally came out was, "Can I stay here for a little while?"_

_"A little while, like, for the afternoon, or…"_

_"I don't know."_

_"Blowout with the Mad Scientist?"_

_"Hoping to avoid one," Larry said truthfully enough._

_"Come on in."_

_Doug seemed like the kind of kid who would have an ultra-cool bedroom, with beanbag chairs and a lava lamp and a sound system to die for, but his actual room had a ceiling as precarious as the rest of the house and posters covering most of the wall-space. The nature of the floor was becoming more and more ambiguous as time passed, covered as it was by junk. The only thing that didn't look like it was broken, had once been broken, or would probably be broken very soon, was his computer, which he'd named "Warlock" for some unfathomable reason, and talked to as if it were just as much of a pet as his rat, Clarice._

_"I've been trying to program him with a voice," he remarked now, gesturing at the computer. "It's not as easy as it looks. He doesn't react well to change, do you?" He sat on the bed. The springs squeaked in perfect harmony. "So what happened in school today? Chris told me you had some kind of seizure."_

_"I know what people are saying." Larry was all too aware of how tired he sounded, and it wasn't even four o'clock yet. "And I'm okay."_

_"Cool."_

_"I guess it's all around school by now that I'm on drugs."_

_Doug leapt up as if he'd accidentally sat on a fork embedded in the mattress, prongs up. "You're _what_?" he squawked._

_"Would you chill?"_

_"So you got stoned or whatever last night, it screwed up your system, and now you're scared that your dad's going to find out. And for some reason, you decided not to tell me. How long has it been going on?"_

_"Doug, I told you to _chill_!" _Should I let him think it? If he's mad that I kept my nonexistent drug problem from him, what'll he think when — _if_ — I tell him the truth?_ "I'm not on drugs."_

_"You swear?"_

_"I swear."_

_"By all you hold sacred?"_

_"By all I hold sacred," Larry repeated, trying not to smile._

_"Cool." Doug removed Clarice from her cage and let her crawl up his arm onto his shoulder. "So, who is he?"_

_Larry was completely at a loss. "Who is who?"_

_"The guy you have a crush on that you don't want Daddy dearest to know about."_

_"_What_ guy I have a crush on?"_

_"You tell me, man." Doug brought his face up to the rat's so they were nuzzling noses._

_"There _is_ no guy. I'm not on drugs, I'm not gay, and I haven't gone and joined a gang or anything like that. And even if any of those things were true" — he stopped himself just in time from saying, _It wouldn't be as bad as what's actually going on_ — "at least I don't give Eskimo kisses to rodents!" The rodent in question was now perched on top of her master's head. "Aren't you worried that she'll take a crap in your hair?"_

_"No, I've got her trained. Listen."_

_"I'm listening."_

_"It's pretty obvious that you don't want to tell me what's going on. So I'm going to stop guessing."_

_"Thanks," Larry muttered._

_"Welcome."_

_"Do you think your parents are going to mind that I'm hanging out here?"_

_"They'll be fine. They like you."_

_"I know." The Ramseys were, by default and comparison, a blessedly normal family. Both parents gainfully employed in positions that did not involve devising new ways to blow things up; two grown, successful children; an adorable teenager who never got into trouble. Growing up, Larry had found as many excuses to spend time at their house as possible. "So did I miss any major history assignments?" As if he was planning on being anywhere near school tomorrow. Now that his initial panic attack had passed, he'd have to come up with some excuse for both the teachers and for his boss. When did it all end?_

_"Nope. We should enjoy it while it lasts."_

_"Sounds like a plan," Larry agreed, but he realized that it felt more like he was talking to himself._

**

_Tanya had completed her own homework in what was almost a state of autopilot. Geometry was a fantastic way to keep from thinking. It was annoying as hell, but it was so logical — if this, then that. _If a ray bisects an angle, then the two separate angles will be congruent. If two angles are supplementary, they'll add up to a hundred and eighty degrees. If you belong to a family whose name is synonymous with destroying freaks, then you don't turn out to be a freak yourself. But that's the given information.

_Now she poked without enthusiasm at the frozen dinner which had looked luscious on the package and resembled cleverly disguised cardboard when it ended up on the plate. She wondered if she'd cooked it too long. Across from her at the table, her father stared at his own meal as if he'd forgotten what purpose it was supposed to serve._

_"I was kind of out of ideas tonight," she said with a nervous smile._

_He smiled back, but didn't answer her._

_She tried again. "Um, how was your day?"_

_"It went very well. And yours?"_

_"It was okay." She tried desperately to think of something funny that had happened at school that day, but the incident with Larry didn't seem very funny. Should she tell him anyway?_

_Dr. Trask cleared his throat. "Tanya, where is your brother?"_

_"Oh. Him." She took a bite of cleverly disguised cardboard, preparing for the worst. A little dry, maybe, but in all seriousness, not that bad. "I think he went to Doug's. He might be staying the night." _Why am I covering for him if it's not true?

_"I see."_

_"It's nothing to do with you." She was aware that her voice was rising in pitch, and hated herself for it. She had promised that she wouldn't tell _anyone_ — if it was even true — so why were the words jumping around in her mouth along with the spoonful of powdered mashed potatoes? "For once." She hoped to earn another smile with that, but she was disappointed. Her father was frowning slightly, as if he somehow detected the lie in her words. She tried to remember what her friends had told her — minus the Electra complex part, of course. "Maybe he doesn't like some of this anti-mutant stuff you've been saying, but that's it. I mean, you knew that."_

_"Yes." Dr. Trask nodded slowly. "Yes, I do know that. He's picked up some very unconventional ideas. Do you remember how I always told both of you that in cases like this, any theories had to be based on conclusive evidence?"_

_Tanya nodded. When he started turning a conversation into a lesson, there was usually no turning back._

_"There are more and more mutants appearing as time passes. It's not something that's going to stop on its own. And they're dangerous. Both of those facts have backing, Tanya. If Lawrence could prove that the mutants mean well, and that they _don't_ mean to destroy us all, then maybe I would be able to accept it."_

_"Maybe…" She swallowed. "Maybe it's not something that can be proven." This was too surreal for words. She wondered if dinner conversation had always been this tense, this… charged, whether Larry was with them at the table or not – and she just hadn't noticed it before. She wondered if it would be different if her mother were there._

_"Have the two of you done any talking about the circumstances?" Was it just a trick of the imagination, or did he actually sound interested?_

_"Yeah. Yeah, we've talked about it." The urge to tell the whole truth had been replaced by another: much more unexpected, much stronger, and much more violent. She wanted to throw her plate, carefully chosen to disguise the obvious TV-dinner-hood of its contents, up in the air and scream. She wanted to bang pots and pans together to drown out the endless ticking of the clock on the wall and put an end to this awkwardness that was so strong it was almost a parody. She wanted to cry, and have him wrap his arms and comfort her as he had when she was ten and had fallen off her bike while she was waving to Lorraine across the intersection. The sensation was almost alien to her — not the physical pain, of course, but the need to be consoled, to be reassured that everything was going to be fine. "Are you ever worried about us?" she burst out._

_He looked at her strangely. "Of course. But I've always trusted you both."_

_Why was she all of a sudden not comforted by that. "What would you do if one of us started acting really weird?" Damn, damn, her voice was becoming squeaky again._

_"I would be concerned…"_

Like you'd even notice, _she thought._

_"…and I would want to know why."_

_She tried to hold onto Vanessa's theory about making a play for attention, because that made the most sense, but she suddenly realized that maybe it would be easier to put sense on hold for a second. Maybe there was a better reason, more abstract but _better_, for telling the truth. Even better than the fact that he knew more about mutants than anyone else she knew, even better than the crazy idea that maybe he had a right to know what was going on in his son's life. She couldn't exactly put it into words. The best her mind could manage was, _It'll get him to wake up._ "Larry thinks he's a mutant." It was only when he dropped his fork on the floor and looked up at her that she realized that, yes, she really had spoken aloud. She'd broken her promise, she'd betrayed him to a force as dangerous and unstoppable as — she searched for a simile during the long, long silence that followed. But once those five words were out, she found herself recounting what had happened that day despite herself._

Dr. Trask made no move to pick up the fallen utensil. At long last, he said grimly, "I suspected as much."

**

_"I have a confession to make," Professor Xavier told his colleagues. Three heads — one white, one shaggy and blue, one that had been turned toward the door as if he had picked up the scent of an eavesdropping human ice cube — turned in his direction. It wasn't often that he began conversations like this._

_"Preoccupation with public relations has caused me to neglect my duties in scanning for emerging mutants," Xavier went on. "I have no excuse for this — providing shelter for them is just as important as appeasing ordinary humans, perhaps now more than ever."_

_"How many have we missed?" Hank McCoy wanted to know. He himself had sought Xavier out years ago, when he'd been struck with his first major bout of immense strength — which, unfortunately, had been coupled with immense rage. He couldn't imagine what it would have been like to miss that opportunity._

_"I will share my complete findings with you immediately, but there is one in particular who needs our immediate attention."_

_Even Logan looked relieved, although he tried not to show it. "What do we got?" he asked, taking a swig from his bottle._

_Both Xavier and Ororo Munroe eyed it in distaste. "Logan, haven't we discussed…" Ororo trailed off pointedly. "It sets a bad example." He made a face, but put the bottle down. "Now, Charles, don't keep us in suspense."_

_"Very well. He is a high school junior located in Washington, D.C., and is currently subject to premonitions of the future which he cannot control." He gave all three a chance to look sympathetic, then continued. "The effects will be devastating if left alone for long. However, that is not his only problem. In fact, if he's not removed from his family situation soon, he's likely to have _many_ problems."_

_"Family situation?" Hank echoed. "Is he somebody we know?"_

"His name is Lawrence Trask," Xavier said calmly. "His father would have destroyed all of us without remorse if chance — and radical sentiments — had not intervened."

"Does the boy share his father's anti-mutant sentiments?" was Ororo's next question.

"He has in the past. From what I gather, since he returned from out of town, he has been ambivalent, and more recently — and understandably — terrified." He sighed. "I also admit to having done a bit of… prying while I was tracking our subject down, and it is difficult to tell whether he's more afraid of his father's anger or his own lapsing sanity. After all, it's taken this long for him to admit the truth to himself."


	14. Building Bridges

Chapter 13: Building Bridges

It was the summer solstice. From that point on, the days could only get shorter. And Violet was perfectly content to sit in her room and watch this one darken into night. The sun had dipped below the horizon already, but the it was still light out. She could see the shadows fade into darkness on the grass and hear the incessant chirping of crickets and tree fogs. Better to focus on what was going on outside than what was going on inside.

Why did this _always_ have to happen?

She pretended not to hear the knock on the door, even after it came again, and then a third time. Her mom, come to deliver a lecture on making a spectacle of herself in front of guests. Pot and kettle much? Or her dad, in an attempt to reason her out of her perfectly justified funk. Like they understood. Either of them.

"Violet? Are you in there?"

It wasn't either of her parents, after all. "Yeah!" she called reluctantly.

Phoebe opened the door a crack. "Hi."

"I thought you two were leaving."

"We are. Soon. I wanted to come up and talk to you, first." She pulled Violet's desk chair out and sat down. "You're a girl after my own heart."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Violet stared at her suspiciously. "This isn't going to start with 'When I was you age' is it?"

"But I _was_ about your age when things started getting crazy. That's the thing. I was sixteen and more concerned with whether Reese Levine thought I was sexy than the existence of a secret superhuman race. And it _was_ a secret then."

"I remember. None of us knew what to expect."

"I'd spent my whole life trying to avoid conflict. That meant a lot of quick exits, until I realized that either I could stop sitting on the sidelines or I could lose one of the most important people in my life."

"I know all that," Violet said impatiently.

"You can't stay on the sidelines either."

"What am I supposed to do, then? You went out and started spreading the message, but I'm _not_ like you, Phoebe! It was your choice to get involved with Stephen, but I already was. And it was your choice to _live_ with this. I had to. Your parents never cared what you did, so you could take whatever side you wanted." Phoebe started to open your mouth, but Violet ignored her. "But mine are always breathing down my neck — it drives me crazy! It hasn't been so bad since we moved here, but sometimes I think that they only see me as his little sister. The other kid. The _normal_ kid."

"Have you ever thought about…"

"Yes. God, yes. Not much, though. If it happens, it happens. But all of this is bad enough. Other kids with mutants in their families don't have to go through this."

"How do you know?"

"Oh, it's this dumb group thing that Mom made me go to. I've listened to them tell their stories, and they make it sound so _easy_."

"Have _you_ said anything?" Phoebe asked curiously.

"About what they had to say, yeah. Nothing about myself. It's not that I don't think Mom would like it, even though I know she wouldn't."

"Then what is it?"

Violet shrugged. "I'm just not ready." How could she tell Phoebe the full truth, the part that she wasn't sure she could rightly admit to herself?

"That's okay," Phoebe told her. "It took me a long time to be ready, too."

Violet gazed up at her surrogate sister hopefully. "I wish I could come live with you. I've always wished it."

Phoebe smiled. "We'd both love that, sweetie. You know that. But your parents wouldn't let you."

"Stevie could…"

The smile vanished. "You know he wouldn't. Ever."

"I guess I do." Violet flopped over and turned her face toward the pillow. "They deserve it, though."

"Don't say that. Nobody deserves mind control."

"Sorry."

"It's okay." She stood up. "Before I go, do you want to know a secret?"

"Is it a good secret or a bad secret?"

"A good secret." Phoebe smiled. "Stephen asked me to marry him."

Violet almost shrieked, remembered that she was supposed to be angry, and flung her arms around her surrogate sister's neck. "What did you say?"

"That I'd think about it."

"Think about it _lots_."

"I will. There's lots to think about."

Violet nodded. "Are you ever scared?" she asked into Phoebe's shoulder.

"Always. I'm scared that some fan will see us together and recognize him, like your mom said. I'm scared that the government will outlaw mutants and we'll have to move to Albania. I'm even scared sometimes that I'm with him for all the wrong reasons, but everyone gets that when they care about someone. And he's worth the risk."

She thought that was one of the most romantic things she'd ever heard. "You're sure I can't go with you?"

"Positive. Look for me on TV, though, okay?"

"I'll tell everyone that I know you," Violet promised. "They'll never believe me!"

"That's my girl." As she was stepping out the door, Phoebe turned back and said over her shoulder, "Remember what I said about the sidelines."

Violet nodded. "Tell Stevie goodbye for me. And tell me what you decide!"

The door closed. She threw herself back on the bed, half-anticipating, half-dreading another knock on the door, this time from one of her parents.

It never came.

**

Krackel: Hi.

shy_violet: Huh? Who's this?

Krackel: It's me. Krackel, from the chat room?

shy_violet: Oh. The one who tried to stick up for me.

Krackel: Yup.

shy_violet: My knight in shining armor.

Krackel: The very same. You never came back.

shy_violet: End-of-school stuff, you know.

Krackel: Why do I not believe you?

shy_violet: That's up to you.

Krackel: Whoa, point taken! Bad day?

shy_violet: Sort of. I don't really want to talk about it.

Krackel: It really sucked, how they were ganging up on you. I know that's not what you meant at all.

shy_violet: It wasn't just because of what I said. I came off sounding like a know-it-all, and they hated that. They think I think I know more about the mutant situation than they do.

Krackel: Do you?

shy_violet: Do I know more or do I think I know more?

Krackel: Do you think you know more.

shy_violet: No idea. Dumb question coming up.

Krackel: Shoot.

shy_violet: Are you a guy or a girl? I mean, nobody can really tell from these screen names.

Krackel: A guy. And I'm 16, so you don't go thinking I'm a perv or anything.

shy_violet: I'm 16 too. Well, almost. So why do you hang out at FreakTalk? What's your connection?

Krackel: If I had a nickel for everyone who asked me that, I'd have

shy_violet: You'd have what?

Krackel: A lot of nickels. The site's really for people who feel like outcasts no matter what, not just mutants and people who know them.

shy_violet: Oh. How long have you been going there?

Krackel: Not long.

shy_violet: Me neither. I met Ice first. She didn't know she was a mutant then. She told us before she told her parents.

Krackel: Sad.

shy_violet: Yeah. Listen, um, Krackel?

Krackel: Yeah?

shy_violet: I gotta go. I'm being summoned. IM me again soon, okay?

Krackel: You got it.

**

Traffic noises. Sirens. Horrendously loud music. Somewhere, a loud mechanical groaning sound, as if a giant was being pulled through the streets. The sky wasn't black or dark blue, but a hazy grayish maroon, and there was obviously no sign of a single star. That was one thing Phoebe had missed when she'd moved to the city. She smiled at the impression she must have made her first day at college: the country girl with big dreams, desperately trying to use the places she'd been as credentials.

She couldn't forget the look on Violet's face when she learned of Stephen's proposal. That girl had been a miniature matchmaker since the age of six, when she had given her brother a picture of Phoebe in a homemade frame for his thirteenth birthday. She could be trusted not to tell her parents, who, Phoebe was sorry to have discovered, still acted like children who thought covering their eyes would make everything go away.

He had taken even her by surprise. Part of her had known it was inevitable, and would even go so far as to say that it was just like him to ask her something that important in front of such a huge crowd of people. He'd assured her that he'd been serious, and seriously thinking about it, and the truth was, she had been, too — though not too much, or else she'd become frightened. Why? She had loved him since they were teenagers, and she couldn't imagine being happy with anyone else.

And the past year had been the invaluable joy of having someone to keep her from screaming during the recording process of her first album (from which he always made a point of playing at the parties and obnoxious high school dances where he deejayed); it had been travel all over and outside the city; it had been their share of fights at first, followed by unspeakably romantic re-conciliations; it had been waking each other up when the nightmares got too awful. It had been terrible and wonderful, being on their own together, and she knew that parts of it couldn't last forever, but did she really want to still be with him when those parts were over?

While Stephen was showering (presumably to wash away the stench of their disastrous visit), Phoebe played back the messages on their answering machine. The first was from, "Jake from Ellipsis Records. But you knew that. Your humble servant requests your attention. There are some things I still want to work out about the big event. Pardon me, events. Who else is going, who you want to be pestered by, that sort of thing. Call me, love."

Who else was going? _Sure, Jake, I'll let you know, as soon as I figure out for myself what I want._

Beep. "Hello, all." ("Kurt, don't you mean 'both'?") "Sorry, liebchen. Anyvay, Amanda's back from her flight, and I'm in the city instead of teaching rambunctious mutants how not to kill each other. Shall ve meet for lunch tomorrow?"

Beep. "Hey, Phoebe. Hey, stud muffin. God, it's hot out here. Still freelancing and looking for the man of my dreams. Any chance the two of you will end up out here?" Pause. "Probably not. I'll watch for you on the boob tube, though, if they can squeeze you in between those damn mutant hearings." Pause. "No offense, Stephen. Love you both. Bye." 

She realized she was humming to herself as she pushed open the window, wishing she could pop the screen and lean out into the smoggy air. Two weeks, she thought. Less than. And the road had better brace itself, because we're hitting it.

"Hey," Stephen said from behind her. He was barefoot, wearing his fuzzy bathrobe, and his hair was damp.

"Hey," she replied. "Better now?"

"Pretty much Who called us?"

"Kurt. Jake, with questions as usual. Angelina."

"How's she doing?"

"She's good. You know, something Violet and I talked about made me think of her."

"What was it?"

Phoebe repeated their exchange about nobody deserving mind control. "And it didn't remind me of her _specifically_," she added. "I started thinking about what I said to Violet, and I guess _that_ led to remembering what happened between Angelina and Larry." She shook her head. "How long's it been since either of us even thought about that?"

"Does she ever talk about him?" Stephen asked.

"No. I have no idea whether she misses him or not. I don't think she even knows where he is. But I do know that she feels guilty, because she was so helpless."

"And you feel guilty, too."

"I did at the beginning." It had been the first time in years that she had seen her sister cry. _I hate him_, she had wailed. _I hate Xavier, and I hate myself for not doing anything!_ If Phoebe hadn't known better, she would have thought she'd been looking at herself at that moment — herself, a year in the past. "I knew that Xavier was good at finding mutants. We both knew that he could…" She knew that he was still behind her, but that he was making no move to touch her. "I just wish there had been another way." It was a funny thing. Angelina once joked about how she was hoping that her relationship with Larry wouldn't turn out to be as angsty as things had gotten between Phoebe and Stephen. But they had turned out okay, and now all Phoebe wanted was for it not to end the way that her sister's first serious romance had. Like it had almost done so many times.

But love had its good times and its bad, right? That was to be expected, right? No matter what their genes were like, right?

"Precisely," Stephen whispered in her ear. He had snuck up on her.

She didn't swat him or say "No fair." She didn't stick out her tongue, she didn't protest, and he didn't apologize. His mind-tricks were something that, at long last, she'd gotten used to. What she did say was, "I'm not afraid. Your parents want us to be afraid, and I'm really not."

"Really _really_?" he asked skeptically.

"Well, maybe a little. Sometimes." She leaned against him, realizing why he might have thought she would say yes right away. There were times like this when she couldn't think of anywhere else she'd rather be. His arms around her, head bent so his warm cheek rested against hers, knowing that he was always _there_ despite everything that had happened or could have happened. "I just wish we knew what was going to happen next…" Spoken like someone who had no idea whatsoever of what that might be like.

"See?" He'd been reading her mind again. This time she did step away from him. "Sorry."

"No, you're right as usual. Let me rephrase it. I wish that I knew I could be happy staying with you forever. I think that I could, but I don't know if I want to risk it. And I wish I could just not be worried about reality jumping up and biting us when we least expect it."

"Then we'll expect it," Stephen said promptly. "We'll just be expecting it together. Like you told them, we've survived worse. We can _definitely_ survive each other."

Phoebe turned and kissed him. "If I still don't know," she said, "it doesn't mean that I don't love you. If that ever changes, you'll know. Trust me."

He kissed her back. "I always have." 


	15. Naming the Monster

Chapter 14: Naming the Monster

_"Two weeks before the Unfortunate Incident, Lawrence was discovered walking in his sleep," Dr. Trask went on. "He was rambling on about the fire that, of course, hadn't occurred yet. When he turned out to be right, I assumed that it was a coincidence. But if he was sure enough to tell another person…" He left the sentence unfinished._

_Just when Tanya had been sure that nothing else would shock her as much as she'd been shocked that afternoon, she was proven wrong. Again. "Does he know?" she asked._

_"Alison was the one who caught him. She was terrified, and she called me as soon as she could. He has no idea."_

_Alison had been best friends with Tanya's mother, and had even carved their names into a wall of her old bedroom and into the bark of the maple tree outside. So she could definitely be sentimental, but she'd acted most of the time like it would take a lot more than a sleepwalking, incoherent teenager to frighten her. "Why didn't you tell him?"_

_"Tanya, is your brother happy with his situation?"_

_She thought back. Either her dad was in on the joke (which was _so_ not his style) or it was the truth. Oh, God, it had to be the truth, didn't it? "No, he just sounded scared. You know, that you were gonna throw him out or sic the Sentinels on him or something."_

_"There _are_ no more Sentinels. At least not at the moment. You know that. And as for throwing him out, that is exactly what I _don't_ want to do." He rose from the table and began to… yes, he really was _pacing_._

_"Why didn't you tell him?" Tanya repeated._

_"Because I knew it couldn't be true. Don't you understand why I couldn't believe that it was true? Do you remember that _Inside Edge_ article?"_

_The sudden change of subject startled her, but she didn't think she'd ever be able to forget. "Uh-huh. You were mad at him for giving stuff away."_

_"At first. But then I realized that Delia Foxworth had been right, in a way. I know her slightly, from my work with the Friends of Humanity. With nothing against you, I always had in mind that Lawrence would be the one to help carry on my work. My cause. My fight against the mutant threat. For him to be part of that threat — it doesn't make sense!" he shouted suddenly, banging his fist on the table. Tanya shrank back. "Precognition — for the love of God."_

_"Pre-what?"_

_"Precognition," Dr. Trask repeated, and now he just sounded tired. "A fancy word for the ability to see into the future. It's better if you know what it's called. A way of… naming the monster."_

_"Larry's not a monster!" Tanya protested._

_"Of course not. But he's been… tainted, if you will… by one. If we can make him understand that… then maybe we can fix this."_

_"Fix it how?"_

_"We'll think of something. I promise. I didn't spend the last decade and then some researching mutation for nothing." He was still pacing. "First of all, though, we have to get him back here."_

_**_

_The afternoon had passed more or less normally, which meant completely — well, almost completely — premonition-free. Larry had made polite small talk with the adults at dinner; they knew better than to ask any inconvenient questions. Either Doug had warned them or they simply knew — like everyone else in the area — that Dr. Trask was "eccentric." He took a second helping of shepherd's pie and even helped with the dishes, listening to the half-understood inside jokes between his hosts. Doug's mother hummed to herself as they cleaned the kitchen. At one point, she asked Larry when he was planning on leaving._

_"Mom!" Doug groaned, then lapsed into his Matthew Perry imitation. "Could you _be_ any more rude?"_

_"He's got a point, Christine," his father remarked._

_"It's not rudeness. It's just curiosity. And he's not offended, are you?"_

_"Not offended, Ms. Jacobs," Larry managed._

_"He'll probably leave later tonight," Doug jumped in, obviously desperate for a quick exit. "If that's okay with Your Majesties."_

_"Always," Ms. Jacobs assured him, but she was looking at both of them strangely. "Do your family know where you are, Larry?"_

_He swallowed. "Sure. Why?"_

_"It's none of my business," she said quickly._

_Doug looked disgusted, and quickly tried to hide it. "Hey, Larry, you want to head downstairs and turn on the Sci-Fi Channel? There's a _Scanners_ marathon on tonight."_

_"Evil telepaths? Exploding heads? World domination plots?" Larry deposited the last plate in the dishwasher. "Sweet."_

_He had been worried that a series of movies about a psychically gifted hero would be the last thing he wanted to have anything to do with right now, but to his surprise, all he felt at first was jealous. _Of a character on a screen. Riiiiight. _But the main character in the movie was… the way he was… as the result of some kind of government experiment. And didn't he take some kind of drug, at the beginning, to help make him like everyone else? Didn't he at least try to hold out for a normal life?_

_About forty-five minutes into the movie, Dani called again. Doug reached for the cordless where it lay beside him on the worn basement rug. "Hello? Oh, hey, sweetheart." Pause. "Well, I've got a million of'em." Pause. "What, do you want to hear them now? Every single pet name I've got?"_

_Larry rolled his eyes._

_Doug covered the mouthpiece with one hand and pointed his middle finger at the ground. "Not loud enough? Let me turn it up for you." Which he then proceeded to do. To Dani, "I've kind of got someone here." Pause. "Yes, _still_." Pause. "Watching a movie on TV. Do you get the Sci-Fi Channel?" Pause. "No? Well, do you want me to tell you everything that happens?" Pause. "I was kidding. See you tomorrow. Yeah, I bet the dress is gorgeous. Can't wait to see you in it." He winked. "Or out of it." Pause. "I'm _kidding_!" Pause. "Uh-huh… Uh-huh… Love you, too." He hung up._

_"You've been going out two days and you're already up to 'I love you'?"_

_"I work fast," Doug boasted. "How long did it take you and Angelina?"_

_"We haven't exactly said it yet."_

_"Really? Beware of the I-Love-You Diss, then."_

_"The what?"_

_"The I-Love-You Diss. It's when you tell a girl that you love her, and she says something like 'Okay' or 'Thank you' or 'I love spending time with you.' Now let's watch the movie. I love this part. Do you think people would hate on him if it got out that he could do that to their minds."_

_"Probably," Larry said. He knew for a fact that telepathy was the wild talent that made the Friends of Humanity the most nervous. It made _him_ nervous, anyway, even now that the likes of Stephen were no more freaky than he himself was. "It's mostly the people who knew him from before they knew what he could do, that trust him, anyway."_

_"True, that."_

_After about ten more minutes, Doug's mother appeared at the top of the basement steps. "Larry, I think you'd better get up here. Right now. Your father and sister are here."_

_Larry's heart stopped. Almost literally. Everything went weirdly quiet for a second, anyway, and he could feel dizzy as if blood really _had_ stopped reaching his brain, along with all thoughts except _It came true. She told him. He knows. She told him. He knows. He knows._ He had a bizarre urge to leap behind the couch and shout, "Hide me!"_

I knew I'd have to face him sometime. Right?

_But had he really? Hadn't part of him thought that he could get a good night's sleep under a roof where he actually felt safe, and then leave as fast as his rust-bucket car would take him? And never come back, ever? Damn it, if he could see the future, how come he didn't know what he was supposed to do next? How come he hadn't the slightest _clue_?_

_Instead, he stood up and said, "I'm coming," like he was being led to the gallows._

_It had gotten quite dark, and the crickets were chirping at top volume. Dr. Trask stood on the front steps, hands shoved in his pockets. Tanya was down on the sidewalk, looking terrified._

_"What's going on?" Larry asked, trying to sound as normal as he could. _Maybe that's not what it is._ But if they'd just needed him to come home, they would have called, right? Not driven all the way over here and let him think crazy thoughts like _If I need to make a break for it._ He was a runner. He could dodge the obstacles, leap over the hurdles. Backpack on the chair behind him. Grab it before he stepped out the door, maybe better if they thought he was going with them. There, in his hand. Tense. Ready. Keys in his pocket. _If_._

_"Your sister has told me something quite interesting."_

_The words _How could you?_, as corny as they sounded, rose up inside him. Not because he _wanted_ to be corny, but because he really needed to know. How _could_ she? "Tanya says a lot of interesting things."_

_"Under the circumstances, I can see why you wouldn't want to say anything yourself." Seeing Doug's parents in the front hall, in the light that was spilling out onto the front porch where the three Trasks stood, "What are both of you looking at?"_

_They retreated._

_"I had to tell him!" Tanya called. She was shivering in the warm evening. "Besides, it wouldn't do any good not to. He _knew_!"_

_Mind snaps out of defensive, back to reality. "You… what?"_

_As she spoke, sounding like she wanted to cry but holding back, he could feel his own face contorting into an expression of horror. "And neither of you said anything?"_

_"I wasn't sure myself," his father snapped. "You can see why, right? I didn't want you to worry unnecessarily in case it turned out _not_ to be true."_

_"You mean you thought that I'd come back around to your stupid _cause_?" Larry shot back._

_"How dare you —"_

_"How dare I what?"_

_"How dare you talk that way about what I've been working for for as long as you've been alive?"_

_"How can I _not_ talk about it that way?"_

_"Do you _want_ to be the way you are, Lawrence?"_

_The abrupt change in his father's tone caused him to take a step back. He thought of the visions he'd seen in the last couple of days, the disturbing ones, the incomprehensible, the terrifying. He thought about how painful it had been to explain the whole thing to Tanya, how much worse it would probably be to tell Angelina the truth. "No. Of course not."_

_"Then come home. Tanya had it all wrong, thinking that I would see you as the enemy. _You_ are not the enemy. Your mutation is." He was practically babbling now, but what he was saying made almost too much sense to be babble. "And I do want to help you. I've been studying ways to… hopefully we could find a way of… suppressing…"_

Suppressing_. Larry thought of the movie he'd been watching, the one that, as far as he knew, was still blaring downstairs. _Suppressing_. The word seemed to repeat itself over and over. Chemicals taken by choice, to squelch what made a person different. To make everything okay again, as okay as Tanya wanted it to be, as okay as he himself sort of wanted it to be. "Why?" He was starting to get dizzy again. He fought it, telling himself that how important it was that he stay in the present for now, because if he lost consciousness, who knew what would happen… both inside and outside his head?_

_Dr. Trask smiled, as if he sensed the struggle involved. "Because I don't want to see you suffer," he said, but his voice was icy._

_"No." Larry shook his head rapidly, to clear it. A little better. "No. Because you don't want it to get out that" — _That you spawned the very thing you've been trying to destroy_ had a nice ring to it, but it didn't sound like the kind of statement that would be taken seriously under any circumstances. "That I'm one of them," he said instead. "That I'm not like you." The world around him was still wavering, but he had managed to keep the visions at bay. So far._

_Then something happened that shocked them back to reality completely. Ms. Jacobs had been listening the whole time. Now she stepped out onto the porch, all the previous warmth and understanding gone from her face. She turned to Larry, who half expected her to make a sign against evil. "I should have known."_

A/N: This chapter was extremely hard to write, since I was trying to be true to the Mad Scientist's personality both in the comics and in Evo. A lot of inspiration here comes from a _Uncanny X-Men_ flashback comic called "The Boy Who Saw Tomorrow." The title is as dumb as paste, and there are a lot of confusing references to alternate timelines that I haven't heard of, and I'm not sure I really understand the ending… but the rest is very good. Angst from the genocidal fanatic who built the Sentinels — who knew?

Speaking of alternate timelines, I'm just beginning to draw connections between the present and past events in this story, but I still haven't the slightest idea how I'm going to link the two together. It's times like this that I wish my first muse were still around, or that I had some of Red Witch's storytelling mojo. Both of them are very, very good with plot.

And on a final note, I posted my first X-Men fanfic, "Spotlights in a Mighty Tower", on March 8, 2001 — two years ago today. Little did I know, and so forth.


	16. The Observer

A/N: Anon, I thought that someone might ask that. In the story, Doug's mother kept her maiden name when she got married. :) 

Incidentally, do any of you know if Evo's going to be on again _ever_? I can put up with _Static Shock_ for the time being (my sister likes it, and I admit to being a sucker for guys with dreadlocks). But it's a poor substitute.

Chapter 15: The Observer

Everett Thomas had one up on most mutants he'd heard of: he had long ago learned to accept what he was. Schoolwork had always come easily to him, even the busywork he hated. He hated sports, too, even though he could have been good at them if he wanted. He loved fantasy and science fiction. And he tolerated the presence of people like Ben Klausner, Cramer's other "scholarship case" (whose claim to fame was that he'd camped out in front of a theater for a week in order to get tickets to the third _Star Wars_ prequel), let alone share a room with him. That in itself should have been a tell-tale sign of geekdom, but Ev didn't recognize his affliction until he actually found himself caring about the next round of the Dungeons and Dragons game he and Ben played weekly in the common room at Cramer Academy.

When he found himself listing synonyms for his prospective label, he knew he was already beyond hope.

But what were his other options, really? Cover his glasses with a face mask and go out for the football team? Pretend to get low grades on tests so the word would stop spreading that he was one of the lowest of the low, who had gotten in because of their high grades and not because their parents used money for toilet paper? (Of course, this was _true_, but…) Make it his goal to get into some high-society girl's pants? He couldn't see himself doing that, in a million years.

Nor could he see the girl he was after wearing pearls on an all-school hike. Did Grayer High even have all-school hikes? He wasn't sure, making a mental note to ask Teresa if he got near her. He knew that his chances of exchanging words with Violet Spencer herself were as likely as Charles Xavier — what was it that IceFemme had said in the chat room? Pouring tea at FOH meetings.

It wasn't that Violet was out of his league, like the girls at Cramer: she was comfortably middle class. It wasn't because she was a white girl — God knew he had never drawn those kinds of lines. It wasn't even because he knew she liked someone else, even though she could, for all he knew. Even online, where she could hide safely behind her screen name (he had never told her that he knew who she was), she revealed very little about herself. Even her connection to Phoebe Corlisle had been an accidental slip.

It contributed to the aura of "untouchable" that had hung over her since he had first seen her sitting in the back of the room at the mutant-advocates meeting just after New Year's. She'd spoken awkwardly, as if she wasn't used to having people ask what she thought, but he'd liked what she had to say. _When you're a mutant, then every time some fish-faced kid gets farmed out as a circus freak, or every time you hear a rumor that the Sentinels are making a comeback, then it shakes up your life. Like an earthquake. And when you're involved — like most of us are — then it means that you feel the vibrations._

Someone had started an off-key rendition of "Good Vibrations" then, but Violet's words had had a lasting effect — those with mutant connections had been known as "the Involved" ever since. Some people treated it as almost a secret code, something that he found alternately intriguing and inane. It sounded like something that Ben would narc on.

And speaking of the devil…

"Hey, it's ten-thirty." Ben closed the door behind him. "Back from the party?"

"I decided not to go. Maybe I'll start packing instead."

"Great! Who needs those losers?"

"Hey, some of those losers aren't that bad."

"Like Teresa, right?"

"Yes, like Teresa. But we're friends, that's all. And she's taken." He sighed. "So _very_ taken. We know each other from the group."

"Right, right," Ben said with a nod. "Why are you in that, anyway?"

"I'm interested, okay? I like…" He trailed off.

His roommate was now looking at him suspiciously. "Observing them, right?"

"Yeah."

"Everything's a science project to you, isn't it?"

"You should talk!"

"I've got nothing against science. But I like conducting my experiments on tidepools and bacteria. Not on people." Ben shrugged. "But whatever floats your boat. Hey, if you're so _interested_ in mutants, you should see what's on TV."

"What?"

"Come downstairs and I'll show you."

For once, the common room TV was switched off. Ben clicked it on and flipped the channels upward. "There."

"…must not confuse me with Graydon Creed or the late Bolivar Trask," a nervous-looking bespectacled man was saying. "I don't agree with the Sentinels or the extreme measures taken by the Friends of Humanity. I don't want to eliminate all mutants. They have as much right to be here as we do. But that doesn't absolve us of _our_ rights."

"That's Senator Kelly," Ben observed.

"I know."

"Can you believe he used to be principal of a high school? There were a lot of rumors about that place, though. It was supposed to be crawling with mutants."

"We have the right to know if we are working beside _them_ every day," Kelly was saying. "We have a right to know if our privacy is in danger of being invaded by some meddling telepath. We have the right to decide for ourselves whether to respect or reject what we see, and we can't do that until we know what we're dealing with."

"You spoke of an invasion of privacy," the talk show host was saying. "Wouldn't it be just as much of an invasion if identification as human or mutant was demanded in any situation?"

"The government wouldn't have control over those situations," Kelly replied, not sounding half as awkward as he looked. "Employers and schools could implement their own policies as to whether they accept mutants or not. The intent is to give them the option."

"Many are concerned that the passage of the Mutant Registration Act would provoke a witch-hunt."

"Well —" Kelly was beginning to look nervous again. "I had hoped it would work toward preventing one."

"Explain, please."

"Well, if everybody knew, there would be, er, no need for witch-hunts, er, would there?"

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," said Ev, not sure whether he was talking to Ben or to himself. He forced himself to watch the rest, but as soon as he was back upstairs, he logged onto the Internet. He had to know if anyone else had been watching.

**

Riddler: You could always declare your devotion to that mutant boy-band.

freakshow617: so Dallas, how's the mutant-sewer-search going?

IceFemme: I want to go more subtle — not to freak them out.

Dallas: Just don't start it with "I have something to tell you." They hate that.

Welcome KRACKEL

Krackel: You guys see the news report?

IceFemme: They're called Skill Monsters, and they're not a boy band. They write their own songs, hell they SING their own songs. And they actually have something to say.

Dallas: Hey Riddler just cause I hear the rumors doesn't mean I go hunting through crap with a flashlight like on Dark Angel or something.

Harley333: hey norms like skill monsters. **I** like skill monsters. jason crest rocks.

mutated_sea_bass: Dark Angel — that show kicked ass.

freakshow617: Yeah I really turn on the TV at night to watch the NEWS. We're not all geeks:

IceFemme: Time difference, remember? What happened?

Riddler: Yeah he rocks, if you like scales and gills.

Krackel: Senator Kelly was trashing mutants. But in a totally non-trashy, I'm-on-humanity's-side kinda way.

mutated_sea_bass: Could have stared at Jessica Alba all day.

Harley333: well maybe i DO like scales and gills. he rips on his guitar and he writes the best songs in the history of alternative pop. "circus freak." "ill tempered." just to name a few.

Krackel: Hey Ice I can't believe you haven't told them yet.

Riddler: Oh look the gang's all here.

Krackel: He said that the hoped the MRA would give people the option of knowing who was a mutant or not and they could make their own decisions about whether to be around them. Or something.

freakshow617: I saw it. Is he even thinking of what it'll be like for the mutants at all?

IceFemme: What would you do if you were me?

Harley333: be serious. he said that?

freakshow617: Right, so they can make their own decisions NOT to be around us.

Riddler: Ice I would be up front about it.

Harley333: disappear. reappear. give em a sort of helpless look and say it.

Dallas: "I'm a mutant. Do you still love me?"

Krackel: Obviously he's NOT thinking of them. He just wants to appease the masses and all that good stuff. Ice I would start with "Can we talk?" Just like that.

IceFemme: Maybe I will say it right out. No stupid magazine advice, no hiding behind Skill Monsters — hot though Nate may be

Dallas: He can lift ME off the ground any day of the week.

IceFemme: I read somewhere that it's better if you tell parents yourself, instead of waiting for them to find out another way.

freakshow617: I boiled the water on the stove from across the room. They freaked at first but then they figured it out for themselves. No words necessary.

Harley333: nate? such a poser. ice girl you have NO taste.


	17. Defiance

Chapter 16: Defiance

_"You're one of them, aren't you?"_

_Doug had run up the stairs into the front hall just in time to hear his mother ask that question. And, like the _genius_ he was, he exclaimed, "I knew it!" Then he got a good look at the scene on the porch, trailed off, and stood there looking about half his age._

_"Please go inside, Doug."_

_"Mom, he's not dangerous —"_

_"Now, Douglas!" He vanished. "I really think the three of you should leave. Immediately."_

_"Ms. Jacobs, as I've explained, I promise I'll ensure that my son will be of no danger whatsoever —"_

_"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Larry demanded. Instead of waiting for an answer, he bolted down the steps and into the driveway._

_"Where are you going?"_

_He turned to his father. "Away." Ms. Jacobs was shouting again — the words "trespassing" and "freaks" and "police" could be heard — and Tanya had, uncharacteristically, started to cry. "You had no right not to tell me. _None_."_

_"You don't want me to help you. What _do_ you want?"_

_Larry didn't even have to think about that. "For you to wake up." _ I wonder if it would work if I told him he was going to die sometime in the next three years?_ Only his sister's sobs reminded him that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to say that right now, not in front of her, just as he didn't want to get her involved in the mess that was inevitable if he stayed. He was furious, but he hadn't completely taken leave of his senses._

_"You haven't even been listening to me," Dr. Trask protested. "I can't guarantee the safety of a mutant" — he tried but failed to keep the disgust off his face as he said the word — "on his own in the world."_

_"I don't have to listen to you ever again!" He had said that — he had actually _said_ it. Under different circumstances, he might be feeling proud of himself._

_"I hate to break this up," Ms. Jacobs called, "but my husband's just called the police and told them about the scene you're making. If you don't leave now, they'll hear more." Her eyes, too, fell on Larry. "A _lot_ more."_

_And now there wasn't anything left to say except, "I'm leaving." Oh, yeah, and, "I'm sorry." He backed away, all the while staring daggers at the man whom he had, if nothing else, depended on and looked up to for the last sixteen years, yet making it clear that the apology was not aimed in his direction._

_It took him four tries to get the car started — his hands kept shaking — and it still seemed like a dream — because by now he wasn't thinking, no way was he going to ruin his escape by _thinking_._

_No rain of bullets, no explosions, and nobody had tried to make him stay. But his flight was an escape nonetheless._

_Slightly less great was leaving Tanya and Doug hanging like this. Even with the radio turned up as loud as it would go, he couldn't drown out the memory of her crying like her world had just come crashing down — which, for all practical purposes, it had. Doug had probably only buckled so quickly because he was so sure he'd get a full explanation later. _

When I see them again_, Larry thought as he drove off into the night without looking back, _I'll make it right. And I _will_ explain everything. I swear.

_It was a promise he never got a chance to keep._

**

_Rogue approached the table with a nervousness she didn't recognize and of which she was immediately ashamed. She told herself firmly that it was justified — this was, after all, her first almost-solo recruiting mission. Logan hung back at a discreet distance, cowboy hat tipped over his eyes, to make sure nothing fishy happened and that the Brotherhood or the Acolytes didn't show up. If Colossus held a grudge, none of them wanted this kid to take the heat. It was up to her, though, to get their potential newbie's attention, endorse the benefits of the Xavier Institute, and make sure he didn't, like, spit on her or anything._

"Like"? _she thought to herself._ Sounds I've been chilling with Kitty and Jubilee for just a tad too long. Yikes.

_They'd tracked him to a rest stop in New Jersey. The guy who matched Cerebro's description sat alone at a cheap plastic picnic table outside, a water bottle standing on the table unopened. She'd been more than a little suspicious when she'd learned his name — what if he still agreed with his dad despite everything? What if he wasone of those self-hating mutants? Well, she could remember relating on that count. What if he made a break for it? What if she couldn't think of anything to say? What if she _could_, but somewhere halfway through her spiel, she forgot _what_ she was saying and _why_ she was saying it?_

_Not even ten yet, and it was damn hot. She wanted to take off her stockings, her long sleeves, even her gloves. She thought of the halters and short-sleeved shirts in her drawers, and wondered what had possessed her to leave them untouched. Her hair felt like wet fur against the back of her neck. She told herself to stop worrying about her appearance and focus on the task at hand. "Ah, hi."_

_The guy blinked and half-nodded._

_She stared at his face like she was trying to carve it into her memory, like she'd seen Princess Jean do. "Lawrence Trask?"_

_His eyes widened in fear, and he quickly tried to hide it with a look of supreme suspicion. "Who wants to know?"_

Impressive, _she thought. Kid clearly thought he was hot stuff, but he'd have to do better than "Who wants to know?" if he wanted to scare her off._

_She indicated the bench opposite him. "Mind if I sit?"_

_"Go ahead."_

_Rogue sat. She wished she'd paid more attention when Jean was explaining how to deal with frightened mutants. It had all seemed like a load of senseless drivel that nobody with half a brain cell would have fallen for, but it was better than not knowing what to say at all._

_"Look, do you want something?" Lawrence asked her._

_"Just to talk." A little better. "My name's Rogue."_

_"Are you an assassin?"_

_She scowled. "No, I'm not. Why?"_

_"You just have an assassin-y kind of name. If it even is yours." Now he was actually looking at her — at least, his face was turned in her direction. His eyes, however, were unfocused, as if he were looking at something far in the distance. She recognized that look from somewhere — although she couldn't quite place it. It was the eyes that threw her, somehow. If that even made sense. Then he shook his head. "Sorry." Another shake of the head, and a swig of water from the bottle._

_"Don't blame you. It's bitchin' hot out." She hesitated, then asked, "What'd you see?"_

_He looked like he was fighting hard not to spit out his swallow of water._

_So he knew what she was talking about. Cool. "Y'know. In that vision you just had. Or whatever. What'd you see?"_

_"I don't know what you're talking about."_

_Rogue sighed. "Look, your dad didn't send me, if that's what you're worried about. And I ain't from the Friends of Humanity, either."_

_"Then how do you know I'm —" He looked around and lowered his voice. "You know."_

_"A mutant? I got my sources."_

_"Are you one, too?" He mistook the surprise on her face for bafflement, or maybe outrage. "Sorry," he added quickly._

_"It's okay. And you got it. Wish I could give you a demonstration, but I don't think you'd like that much." That deer-in-headlights look was back in his eyes. "We're not going to hurt you." She was surprised at how much like Jean she sounded._ First I go talking like Kitty, now this. God help me.

_"There's a 'we'?"_

_"Yeah." She'd been wondering how to get onto this. Looked like he had done her work for her. "Y'see, I'm from the Xavier Institute."_

_"Charles Xavier?" he asked warily._

_Of course he'd heard of the professor. "You're good."_

_"So what's this Institute of yours? Some kind of experimental thing for freaks? Nice of you to _offer_ instead of kidnapping me or something, but —"_

_"At ease." Where was she getting this stuff? "We're nothing like that. We're…" She floundered. _Um, line, please?_ "We don't experiment on mutants." No way was she going to use Scooter's "accepted by their fellow man" riff. "We… teach them, I guess. And give them a place to stay."_

_"I'm not getting you. And I got enough troubles."_

Patience, patience._ "I guess you haven't heard the best kinds of stuff about mutants. But Professor Xavier's a good guy, and…" She thought of her roommate's disdain for a certain rock tumbler that had once been as passionate as her feelings for him had been. Then she pushed it away, telling herself that she was being paranoid again. Focus! "And I bet he could help you control your gift." Now she really sounded like Jean. Barf._

_"Yeah — uh-huh — I saw my English teacher having an affair with her dog groomer. I saw some girl inside waiting on her front lawn for aliens to come pick her up. I saw when my dad was going to die, and —" He looked like he was going to finish that sentence, but he thought better of it and started over. "Just now I got this picture of you snuggling with some guy in a trench coat. I don't know what that means. You probably do. So I'm not with you on this whole 'gift' thing. Sorry."_

_Who did she know who walked around in a trench coat? _Focus!_ She congratulated herself on getting that many words out of him, then said his name again as he got up to walk away._

_"What?" Now he sounded irritated._

_"At least come with us to meet the professor."_

_"I don't think so." Then he turned a corner and was gone._

_She debated running after him, then decided against it. The more desperate they seemed, the less likely they'd be taken seriously. He obviously wasn't going to listen to her, and she had a hunch that Logan would have an even less desirable effect. She pictured running after Lawrence and saying "Wait, please listen to my friend with the adamantium claws and attitude oozing out his ears!" Not a chance._

_"What'd he say?" Logan wanted to know._

_"That he wasn't interested."_

_"Did you make it clear to the kid that we were here to help him?"_

_"I did exactly what the professor said. Maybe my heart wasn't in it."_

_"Nah, Stripes, it's not your fault. His life's been pretty messed up."_

_"You going to try to talk to him?"_

_"Nah," Logan said again. "We'll have Charles figure out where he's headed and keep an eye on him. We did sorta the same thing with you, remember?"_

_"Duh." She chanced the question. "Do you think he'll be mad?"_

_"What?" Her companion looked surprised. "You know the Prof better than that. You did your best, and you're new at this recruiting thing. You'll do better next time."_

_"Gotcha." She did not mention her fervent desire that there not _be_ a next time._

A/N: My apologies for the corniness of the first scene. Yes, the conflict between Larry and his dad is a bit of a cliché. We readily acknowledge this. This is what happens when Neva starts working with a new antagonist — she tends to play him or her up until her muse is practically rolling on the floor with laughter. Usually it wears off and sanity reigns again. 

I've been suffering some angst re: whether I want to continue this story or not. The people who have listened to me whine have been simply amazing. Could not resist the Rogue/Remy and Lance/Kitty references in this chapter — the latter of which indicates that Xavier is still my number-one baddie.

Sandoz, thanks so much for the information. I can't wait! And re: your question, I have no idea either. I haven't killed off a character since _Bright Darkness_.


	18. Middle Ground

Chapter 17: Middle Ground

The grass was still soaked with dew, and the birds were chirruping. It was a perfect, too-good-to-be-true first day of summer vacation, and Violet stood on their small patch of front lawn for a long time, glad that nobody was up to see her doing something so sanguine as "greeting the day." _Sanguine — careful, Vi, your Honors education is showing._ Greeting the day was reserved for girls who joined the Glee Club and swung on fence posts.

The sunlight felt indescribably good on her face. _I have the whole summer ahead of me,_ she thought with a mixture of grimness and awe — if such a combination were even possible. _I can get my filthy summer reading assignments done in the hammock, or on the roof if I'm careful. _What was the point of reading overwhelmingly boring Great Literature™ if you couldn't do it in a potentially fatal setting? Darren had, at one point, threatened her with restriction until hell froze over if he ever caught her up there again, but compared to the secrets most of her classmates kept from their parents, it seemed like a minor misdemeanor. She didn't even know what the summer reading assignments were yet — they'd be mailed to all the honors English classes by teachers who did not understand the meaning of the word "vacation."

_Best of all, I'll turn sixteen_ — she closed her eyes and counted — _forty-seven days from now. _Even the significance of that particular birthday couldn't dampen her childish excitement.

The realization that even if Stephen and Phoebe were going to be around for the event, they probably wouldn't want to attend another family gathering if their lives depended on it, did the job rather nicely.

When her mother had called her off the computer the night before, she had both hoped for and dreaded the prospect of discussing the fight, but Charity had only wanted her to help clear the table. Which they had done, soundlessly.

_She's not going to get off that easy_, Violet thought now as she made her way back into the house to fix breakfast. During the school year, even on weekends by force of habit, this usually meant grabbing an orange and tossing back a cup of coffee on her way outside. Today, though, she felt like starting off her summer on a productive note, before she let all but the necessary brain cells dissolve. _That_ meant French toast, which was easy and guaranteed to put parents everywhere in good moods. She wished she knew how to make something fancier, like omelets with cheese. Or crepes, maybe. _Yum_. With apples and cinnamon inside. _Even better. God, food fantasies, I am so sick._

She had just deposited the first batch of egg-soaked bread in the sizzling pan when Charity padded into the kitchen, wrapped in her bathrobe, smiling as if nothing had happened the evening before. "Welcome to summer vacation."

Violet forced a smile. "Welcome, yourself." _Are we still not talking about last night?_

"Only until summer school starts next week," her mother said ruefully. "When will that batch be done?"

"I'm flipping them now," Violet said, and did so. She could feel eyes watching her as she coaxed a piece of toast-in-the-making back into the pan. _So, can I even _mention_ last night?_

"Are you planning to go out and see your friends later?"

"If I can hook up with Teresa, yeah." _Okay, last-night-conversations strictly not on the agenda. She's made that much clear._

"Teresa's a nice girl. How did you meet her again?"

_I am not falling for this one. I am not falling for this one._ "In school."

"Well, I know _that_, but —"

_I am not falling for this one. I am not — _ "We went to that group thing together." She transferred the French toast from the pan to a plate. _Think happy thoughts._

"That's right. Vi?"

"Hm?"

"What did you think of it?"

_Apple crepes. Sunbathing. Ryan Phillipe._ "It was kind of cool."

"I think it could have helped you a lot." Even though she was facing the wrong way, Violet could hear the deep breath that Charity took before continuing. "Is that where you heard about this whole mutant registration business?"

"No. You heard Stevie. I found out about it on the Internet."

"You know that you can't always believe what you read online."

"But it's been on the news, too. Senator Kelly wants to single out mutants so they don't take us by surprise. That's all I really know." Even when she tried to look at the whole thing objectively, and not just as one of "the Involved", she still wasn't sure yet of what to feel. It wasn't like she had ever really tried to understand politics before.

"If you ever want to talk about it…"

"Okay."

"I'm sorry about last night," Charity said.

It was hard to say what shocked Violet more: the change of subject or the apology. Should she say "It's okay"? Because it should have been, but it wasn't. Should she tell her mom what she'd told Phoebe? Not a chance. She settled for a nod.

"It just frustrates me, sometimes, that he always has to _remind_ us…"

Oh, dear God. It's not going to go away because you don't like to talk about it. If you haven't gotten that in the past six years, I can't help you.

"That's why I blew up at him like that." Charity removed a plate from the cabinet over the sink and held it out. "One piece, please."

"Here. I just wanted to be… for one evening…"

"Normal?" Charity cut her off. "We wanted that as well."

That wasn't what I was going to say.

"It tastes very good." Abruptly, she changed the subject again. "Phoebe mentioned something about a package that she'd be sending you in a couple of days."

There has to. "What kind of package?" Violet asked. "Is it for my birthday?"

"No, I think they have something else planned for that. And she didn't say what was in it."

"Oooh, mysterious. I'm sure it's not drugs or dirty magazines or anything like that." At the expression on Charity's face, which signified that she had only heard the words "drugs" and "dirty magazines", Violet quickly added, "Not that I'd expect it to be any of those things." _Rewind, rewind!_ "Maybe it's old clothes or something. She sometimes sends me the stuff she's tired of." She cut off a piece of French toast and sampled it. "You're right, this is good."

"Want to do all the cooking from now on?"

They both laughed. The conversation had been steered away from mutants or delinquency. All was well. There were times like this, especially, when Violet wondered how she could ever think that there was anything wrong with her family.

**

The package turned out to be two spiral-bound notebooks, narrow-ruled, one water-marked as if it had been left out in the rain. A quick glance at the first page of the one lying on top confirmed who it belonged to. A note, in the same handwriting, was taped to the inside cover.

_Dear Vi,_

_You'd think that I'd have enough to distract me from what you said that night — about me having a choice. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was enough to make me dig up these old journals that I kept during my last year of high school, and actually look at them again. I kind of gather your parents have a habit of keeping things from you, and even they don't know the whole story. They don't even know the half of it._

_You, at least, deserve to know that much. There's so much we haven't talked about, and a lot more than I try not to even think about that much. It's okay if you feel the same way, and if you want to leave these alone. Let sleeping mutants lie, and all that. I'll understand._

_Love,_

_Phoebe_

_PS. Don't forget your promise._

Phoebe's diaries. Her thoughts, her memories, her feelings throughout her last year of high school — the year that the Friends of Humanity started crawling out of the woodwork, the year of the Sentinel scare. The year that Stephen had returned home, changed in a way he tried his best to hide, in a way that he had never been able to bring himself to share.

The room was so cold for June.

_I can't read these._

She gathered up both notebooks and shoved them way, way back in her closet.

A/N: So that's how I'm connecting the past and the present — kind of a "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" thing. I could think of worse stories to emulate; both the book and the movie were really good.

I'm having a bit of trouble keeping Violet's side of this story rolling. If anyone has any suggestions, I'll love you forever.


	19. Odd Girl Out

Chapter 18: Odd Girl Out

When the Snooz-Alarm woke Tanya up the next morning, her pillow was drenched with tears and she was already half an hour behind her morning schedule. She'd heard of people crying in dreams — could last night have been one of those? It certainly felt like one. She was further convinced when her dad knocked on the door, calling that she was going to be late for school, as if nothing really had happened. "Since your brother's not here," he added, "you'll have to take the bus."

_She let her head fall back to the pillow._

_"Tanya?"_

_It was real. Every second of it. How could she go to school, sit through classes, and look at pictures of prom dresses with Lorraine, after last night? Apparently the same way he could go from completely manic to completely under control… but it was a skill she herself had never mastered. "I'm… not feeling well!" she called, then crossed her fingers. _Right, like that'll convince him.

_"What's wrong?" He actually did sound worried. No, more than worried…_

_Oh, no. He couldn't be thinking _that_. "I think that those lame TV dinners I whipped up last night got to me."_

_"Well, I ate it too, and I'm fine." Very, very long pause. "But if you want to stay home, I suppose you can. It's better that way. Better, in case we hear anything from Lawrence. Mrs. McLean is next door should you need anything."_

Just like that?_ Any other day, he would have delivered one of his standard lectures, deliberate and persuasive, letting her know that it was in her own best interests to listen. He probably would have filled it with phrases like "value of education" and "mind over matter" and, if he even suspected her of trying to fake him out, "Trasks don't avoid their problems." Rather, they sent giant robots to wipe those problems out._

He understands_, she realized. _He may be too much of a tight-ass to show it, but I think maybe he understands._ "Thanks," she said, trying to make herself sound nauseated. Not much embellishment was needed._

_"Feel better."_

_She snuggled back under her blanket. Her eyes felt crusty from crying, and she made a mental note to wash her face and change the covering on the pillow and to give the whole situation the serious, dedicated thought that, clearly, only she was capable of giving it right now. Right after she rested her eyes for just… just another minute…_

_**_

_It was midmorning when she opened them again. Almost mechanically, she showered, dressed, pulled her hair back, and went into the kitchen to answer the incessantly ringing phone. The answering machine had just started to drone before she lifted the receiver. "H-hello?" she whispered, trying to sound as weak as she could._

_"Tanya?" The male voice on the other end was vaguely familiar. Too young to be from the Friends of Humanity, few of whom bothered to learn her name anyway._

_"Who's this?" she asked warily._

_"It's Doug Ramsey."_

_"Oh. Hi."_

_"Why aren't you in school?"_

_"Who are you, the truant officer?" she snapped, forgetting to sound like an invalid._

_"Not last I checked."_

_"I'm sick."_

_"Oh."_

_"So why aren't _you_ in school?"_

_"I'm between classes, so I gotta talk fast. Larry's not here either. Is he at home?"_

_She forced the words out. "No."_

_"Did he come home at _all_?"_

_"No."_

_"Where is he?"_

_"I don't know," she said. "He just… drove away. And then your mom made us leave before she had us arrested."_

_"You don't _know_?"_

_Her temper flared again. "He didn't exactly give us a forwarding address. You saw what happened. You know" — she swallowed — "what he is."_

_"Yeah, I kind of figured," he said in a low voice._

_The flare became a blaze. "Did _everyone_ know except me?"_

_"Sorry." A bell shrilled in the background. "Oh, man. Tanya, I just gotta ask — are you okay? And I don't just mean sick or not."_

_Was the world really going to come to an end if she told some geeky junior that she wasn't feeling her best after her entire family had fallen apart? Probably not. "Not really. Did your dad really call the police?"_

_"Not exactly. I think they were going to, though. Could you just tell me if he comes back?"_

_She started to say "Of course" and then cut herself off. "Doug, you don't want to get involved in this."_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"I don't know, maybe you _want_ to be quoted in the next _Inside Edge_ article about us. But I guess that, you being Larry's best friend, you've gotten a little taste of our continued little family soap opera. And you know to stay away."_

_"Listen, if I don't get going soon, I'm going to be in bigtime trouble. Keep an eye out for him, okay?" And then the line went dead._

_Despite the warmth of the kitchen, Tanya found herself shivering. She tried to think of the other people Larry knew — well, obviously Kent and Clancy didn't know anything either. No, it would have to be someone who didn't go to their school, someone who he already knew he could run to if the going went tough._

_Well, _duh_._

_But she didn't know Angelina's number. And even she did, there would be no point in calling this time of day, would there? And even if there were, did she really _want_ to find Larry? Did she really _want_ him to come home?_

Of course you do,_ she scolded herself. _It's not like he has a _dangerous_ power, unless he tells you something you don't want to hear.

_Maybe that wasn't the issue at all. Maybe it was just the knowledge that with him there, things could only get worse. All that talk about "suppressing" had made her hair stand on end. She wanted Larry back to normal, but not if it was going to involve anything that would hurt him. He may have been a creep sometimes, but he didn't deserve to be made into his father's guinea pig. Right? No one — not even mutants — deserved that. Right?_

Dad, how come we never find out what you have planned until after it's too late?

_There was no answer, of course. There never had been._

_On their way back from Doug's house, he had very nearly sideswiped a Federal Express truck and not said a word. She couldn't remember much of what had been going through her head at the time, but she'd been too terrified even to tell him to slow down. It wasn't until they were back in the house that he had even noticed that she was there, and then only to tell her to go to bed. It wasn't even nine o'clock yet._

"You made him leave,"_ she'd said. Or had she imagined that part?_

"He made himself leave."

_She thought for a second that she was going to cry again, but when the lump in her throat dissolved, she went into the living room and flipped on the TV. _Nebula Vista_ was on. She'd gotten hooked on the show three years ago, when she'd had the chicken pox, and now she actually found herself humming along with the theme music. The characters were familiar, the sets were comfortable, and the stories defined "escapism" in the truest sense of the word. Seeing Priscilla and Kyra plot against Dale… it was even better than geometry at taking her out of herself, and she could let herself go willingly without worrying about there being a quiz the next day._

_She wished she lived in that world._

_She was even starting to wish that she'd gone to school. The diversions of notes and class discussions and dubious pizza and her friends' chatter, so repellant when she'd opened her eyes that morning, now seemed like an almost holy release. The problem with being alone — probably the reason why she liked being a People Person — was that when you were with your friends, you had to deal with each other. When you were alone, however, there was nobody to distract you from dealing with yourself, and all the excess baggage that came with it._

_What was she going to do? What _could_ she do?_

"I'm going to give him until tomorrow to come back, then start making calls. You know that you're not to tell another person about this."

"Maybe he just needs space."

"He's not thinking clearly. What if he's hit with a premonition when he's out in public?"

"You just don't want other people to know."

"For his own sake."

I wouldn't even tell anyone if he had said I could, _she thought now._ It's too messy, too complicated, too confusing. _Those were the best words she could manage._ It means that everything he's — well, not taught us, exactly — but implied, isn't true. And I can't even call it a lie, because I think that somewhere along the line, he actually started believing his own self that we're invulnerable. To tell people what was going on now, I'd have to backtrack like you wouldn't believe. Like whoever was listening to me wouldn't believe. Because there's a little bit of those lessons still ingrained in me — the part that tells me that nobody will understand.

**

_Vanessa showed up not long after what Tanya knew was the time that that last bell rang, carrying a small collection of magazines. Tanya went to the door with the blanket around her shoulders, hoping to reinforce the whole "sick" image. "Hi."_

_"Hey. How contagious are you?"_

_"I don't think very."_

_"Actually, I wouldn't mind getting sick. I've got this French vocab test tomorrow. God help me. I guess what I should have asked first was, are you feeling better?"_

_"I'll probably be back tomorrow," Tanya said truthfully._

_"Is Larry sick, too?"_

_It would be so very easy to lie and say yes. So much simpler. So much more conductive to keeping themselves separate from the world that the "cause" was supposed to protect, not that she believed any of that. Honest. "N-no."_

_"Then where is he?"_

_Forgetting to sound sick, and aware of the achy dullness in her own voice, Tanya replied, "He took off last night." A matter of hours after she had sworn not to tell anyone, she was on the verge of spilling the entire story — to her best friend, sure, but spilling it nonetheless. She caught herself just in time. "He and my dad had this big fight, and he just left."_

_"I'm so sorry. Why didn't you call? You know you could have called."_

_"I was pretty upset." That was for damn sure._

_"What was the fight about?"_

_"I… I don't want to say."_

_"Do you know where he went?" Vanessa prodded._

_"I have an idea, but I don't want to try to get in touch with him. He might be mad at me, too."_

_"That's horrible. I know that the two of them fought all the time, but I didn't know how bad it was."_

You still don't know the half of it._ "I don't think I did, either," Tanya said, more to herself than to anyone else._


	20. Emoticons

Chapter 19: Emoticons

What if they call? Stephen wanted to know, sending a dollop of nervousness and frustration along with the question. A week had passed since the disastrous family gathering.

Phoebe covered the receiver with one hand. "I'll take beeps," she said aloud. "But I won't be long. It's long-distance, anyway. Yeah, Angel, what was it that you wanted to tell me?"

Logically, of course, she was right, and logically, he had only had his interview at the WZAP station yesterday afternoon, and _logically_, he was behaving like a teenage girl waiting for her crush to call, but when it came to Important Life-Changing — or at least Temporarily Life-Changing — Events, logic could be suspended. _It's the perfect job for me. I love music, I love making people laugh, I have patience with machinery, and I'm good at kissing ass if need be. And if at first I don't succeed…_

That reminded him, yet again, and in some sort of sick way, of the party a few nights ago. He'd told Kurt all about it when the four of them had eaten lunch together the day before yesterday. The fuzzy one was still living at the Institute, filling the same role that Logan and Ororo once had in instructing adolescent mutants. He was a lot more restrained, a lot less the class clown, than he had been when they'd first met. Responsibility and Amanda had been good for him.

_"So you told her you vant to stay in the city?"_

Even though he'd explained the situation ahead of time — how what Phoebe needed was some time to think her own thoughts if that was going to help her make her decision any faster — Kurt had still been suspicious, and Stephen had been at a loss as to the reasons. At first.

"Come on, you don't think she's going to hook up with Nate Eldridge or something like that, right?"

_"Nein. But vat if she decides she likes being alone better?_ _Vat if she decides that she doesn't vant to marry you?"_

_"Thanks for the vote of the confidence."_

_"I'm not saying she von't. I'm just sayink, vat if?"_

_"Then… I don't know what then."_

_"It vould mess things up for her — especially now."_

_"I prefer not to think of myself as someone who messes things up for people."_

_"You know, and I know, and she knows, that vat she's going to be doing on zis tour of hers is —"_

_"Singing?"_

_"Vell, zat too, but she's going to be deciding vat's more important to her — her career or you."_

"You _met_ someone?" Phoebe exclaimed.

Now who's sounding like she's still in high school?

This time, she did make a face at him. "How can you sort of meet someone? You either meet him, or you don't… oh, I see. You met him, but you don't know if he's _someone_. Okay, where?" Pause. "You weren't actually… _in_ the sewer, were you?" Pause. "Interviews. Good."

_"Hey, it's not like it's an easy decision. She worked to get where she is now."_

_"But it's all behind her, and she _has_ success now. And popularity."_

_"She has me too."_

"A landscaper, huh?" Phoebe opened a tax envelope, peeked inside, and raised her eyebrows, followed by her trademark "to-be-consulted-at-some-future-time-which-is-not-now" expression. "What's his name?" Pause. "Well, this Michael Timmons sounds delightful. Has he asked you out?" Pause. "And what'd you say?" Pause. "What's keeping you?" Pause. "I think _I_ do." Long, long, long pause. Very faintly, Stephen could hear Angelina's voice shouting across the phone lines. Or maybe the connection was weird, and she just _sounded_ like she was shouting. "No, I don't think you're thinking of it as cheating on — yes, I know how many guys you've been with since you moved to the Coast" — here Phoebe waved her free hand near her face in a universal "we-are-very-impressed" gesture — "and we've already had _that_ conversation, so you know what I think. Let me ask you something, Angel. Have any of those guys ever been…" Apparently, she'd been drowned out again. "Okay, I've stopped, I've stopped. Yes, and I'm very glad you _did_ forgive us. Just think about it, okay? I have to go anyway — my other half's expecting a call. Kiss kiss. Love you. 'Bye."

"So, any more used to calling me your other half?" Stephen asked. She didn't answer, and he could tell without even trying that her mind was on the conversation she'd just finished, or, worse, five years in the past, trying to figure out if there was any other decision they could have made. He had to admit, he sometimes wondered it too, no matter how many times he reminded himself that you couldn't save them all, that sometimes it was either a normal life or nothing, that there was no proof that Angelina would have wanted to be with Larry anyway after she'd found out. Her reaction to his news couldn't, however, have been worse than the one she'd delivered when Phoebe told her. Stephen could speak from experience when he said that it was _always_ better to hear that particular confession straight from the source. No matter what.

_"_Mein freund_, I know she has you."_

_"We've been StephenandPhoebe — one word — for the last twelve years. Even when we were in college and decided to 'ease off' and 'leave things open' — both of us _knew_. She's everything to me."_

_"Twelve years is one thing. But you are asking her for her _life_. Zink about everything first."_

_"You really think she's going to say no."_

_"Of course I don't _think_ she is. And I vant ze best for both of you. But still…"_

_"What about you and Amanda?"_

_"Amanda is not nationally recognized."_

_"I don't believe this."_

Luckily, Phoebe had returned from the bathroom and Amanda from the wall of paintings she was admiring just in time to keep from the disagreement from turning into something worse. Stephen and Kurt had parted somewhat uneasily, each unable to understand what made the other so damn sure whether things were going to work out for better or for worse.

There he was, thinking about marriage again. He ran a distracted hand through his mop of curly hair, giving Phoebe an I'm-ready-for-anything sort of smile.

He wasn't sixteen anymore, and knew he couldn't base his decisions on what he had felt for her back then. But he also had — or thought he had — a pretty clear picture of what he felt for her now. And Kurt thought that given the chance, she would decide that it wasn't worth it (not wanting to turn the two of them against each other, he hadn't mentioned their conversation to her), just as his parents had thought that entering the spotlight together would spell trouble. He wondered who was right. He wondered if their time apart meant that he was supposed to start preparing for a life together, or if it was the beginning of the end. He wondered if he should demand to go with her, as they'd originally planned. Most of all, he wondered when what _he_ wanted had become so completely insignificant.

**

Krackel: Hey.

shy_violet: Oh hi.

Krackel: Is this soon enough for you?

shy_violet: Big smile. OK with me. So what's going on?

Krackel: Been home the past week.

shy_violet: Where's that?

Krackel: Pittsfield, MA. I'm at boarding school most of the year. Cramer Academy.

shy_violet: OMG! I go to school right near there.

Krackel: Grayer, right?

shy_violet: Yep. 

Krackel: We might know each other.

shy_violet: Yep.

Krackel: So, are you that tall, blonde, gorgeous chick with the Irish accent?

shy_violet: No, that's Teresa Rourke.

Krackel: Kidding. I know her too, actually. Friend of yours?

shy_violet: I don't have too many of those.

Krackel: Pity-party RSVP: Sorry, I'm otherwise engaged.

shy_violet: Double LOL! No pity-party, just fact. And I'm not one of the AGPs either.

Krackel: ?

shy_violet: Angsty Goth Princesses.

Krackel: I see

shy_violet: They don't like people. I like people. I just don't have too many friends.

Krackel: Why not?

shy_violet: Whoa whoa whoa! We just met. If that. Talking about feelings is treading on dangerous ground, pal.

Krackel: Duly noted.

shy_violet: Well if you hadn't told me you were prep-school material before, I would know now.

Krackel: ???

shy_violet: Nobody says "Duly noted."

Krackel: :( I say it.

shy_violet: I rest my case.

Krackel: Now who's crossing boundaries?

shy_violet: Subject change. How's things in the chatroom?

Krackel: Good. Ice told her parents.

shy_violet: GET OUT!

Krackel: Last nite. She took Harley's advice. Show and Tell, in that order.

shy_violet: I have so much respect for her.

Krackel: Are **you** a mutant?

shy_violet: Nope. But I figure that it's better to tell people instead of waiting for them to find out. More control over the situation, and all that.

**

IceFemme: So if you haven't heard ::drumroll::

shy_violet: Krackel told me. How do you feel?

IceFemme: Like a freak.

shy_violet: O_O

IceFemme: Pretty much.

shy_violet: What'd they say?

IceFemme: My mom started to cry. My dad grounded me until hell freezes over.

shy_violet: ??????

IceFemme: For not telling them.

shy_violet: So if you're grounded, it means you're not supposed to use the Internet, right?

IceFemme: I'm not. My parents are out. I had to tell the gang.

shy_violet: Sorry they're mad.

IceFemme: Riddler showed me this web article about families with mutants in them. It's all about how shock prompts parents to do crazy things. It all hits them all at once — the truth that their precious baby is DIFFERENT in big neon glowing letters — the hate groups — people like Sen. Kelly — and they just freak out.

shy_violet: They'll get over it.

IceFemme: Yeah right. They'll tell all their FOH friends. I mean my mom is mostly into it because it gives her a chance to MINGLE but still

shy_violet: My mom's the same way.

IceFemme: But still my dad believes.

shy_violet: Ouch.

IceFemme: Do you know of any… I don't know… halfway houses for freaks?

shy_violet: Um

IceFemme: I'm serious.

shy_violet: I know you are. Um I'll ask around. And good luck.

A/N: I made a change or two to Ch. 4, "Humanly Possible," and Ch. 14, "Building Bridges." Nothing huge, not like what I did midway through _Bright Darkness_, and _nothing_ compared to what I was actually thinking of doing if the I found that the story was as disastrous as I thought it was. Until I find a new muse, ideas will be incorporated as I think of them. Please, please forgive me.


	21. Reunited

Chapter 20: Reunited

_Larry's mood improved once there was a fair amount of highway between him and the rest stop where he'd met that creepy girl with the streaked hair. It wasn't that she had known what he was — at this point, if he met someone who _hadn't_ known before he did, he'd be shocked. It wasn't all her talk about Charles Xavier running a safe house for freaks — _that_ didn't surprise him one bit. And it definitely wasn't the vision he'd been hit with when they started talking. If Rogue — that had been her name, right? — wanted to get it on with some weird-eyed guy with weirder fashion sense, who was he to stop her?_

_What made him want to get away as quickly as possible was her repeated referral to his "gift."_

Okay, granted, it could be worse._ He may have hated what was happening to him, he may have been scared out of his shorts about whatever was coming next, but hearing his dad describe his new… _whatever_ this was… as "the enemy" had struck a nerve. Enemies could be defeated, or at least evaded for a little while. You could run from them. Although he was no longer thrilled about the prospect of telling Angelina the truth, she was his reminder that he was running _to_ something, not _from_ something. He willed himself not to get distracted by the constant thought — the only thing that had the chance of getting him through this — that soon he'd be seeing her again._

Not the enemy. It's more like in the movie that we were watching. Some kind of… um, is affliction the right word?_ Not something he'd asked for, and _definitely_ not a gift. Did gifts make you sick to your stomach, did they make you jump at loud noises, did they turn your family against you? How about your friends? Nope. Did they make you wonder if you were going crazy, or might _possibly_ go crazy? Probably not._

_High above the road, a train was making its way down the tracks. Larry could vividly (surprisingly so, considering how much had changed since then) remember taking a similar train almost six months earlier, disillusioned and confused, on his way to visit people he hadn't seen since he was small. And it was that first trip that he focused on now for some reason. The one he could only recall fragments of, and now, just one fragment in particular. He must have been about eight at the time, and completely obsessed with Tetris. Had he agreed to go along on the trip on the condition that he could bring his video games along? Probably._

"Daddy, Larry's making faces at me!"

"I am not! I was playing my Game Boy!"

"And the noise is making me crazy, Lawrence. Please turn it off."

"But I'm almost winning! Come on, Dad, that's not fair!"

"Hah-hah, Larry's busted!"

"Just let me beat this last score."

"Turn it off before I confiscate it."

"Busted!"

"Play something else. With your sister. Play I Spy."

"That game's for kids."

"Oh, I see. Please forgive me, son. I forgot how grown up you were. And I'm getting tired. Would you like to drive, maybe? "

"Yeah!"

"Ask a ridiculous question."__

_The look on Tanya's face when she realized that her brother was no longer in trouble… that was one of the things that stayed with him, even now. He'd abandoned his Tetris game after that in favor of pretending to be a race-car driver. It had kept him amused for the rest of the ride to Wallglass. And the biggest difference between that trip and this one wasn't the state of his family or how his DNA registered. Eight years ago, he had been traveling _away_ from home. Now, despite himself, he couldn't help but feel that he was traveling _toward_ it._

**

_"So you handed it in?" Angelina asked as she and Haley Swanson exited the school after the last bell had sounded. Her friend nodded. "Way to go. That paper was draining your soul away. _Damn_, I'm glad I dropped history."_

_"You were amazing, though. Nobody else would tolerate me calling them and just screaming about how much I hated my life."_

_"Oh, and I _did_ like it?"_

_"I never said you _liked_ it," Haley clarified. "I said you put _up_ with it. There's a difference."_

_"It's not like I had a choice. Anyway, it gave me a great idea."_

_"Yeah?"_

_"Academic cheerleaders! You know, they could call people who were dealing with tough assignments, and cheer them on, you know, rah-rah-rah, sis boom bah, keep plugging away and you'll get an A!" Angelina waved an imaginary pom-pom and laughed. "If people's studies are supposed to count more than athletics, then why does the football team have cheerleaders and just the regular students don't?"_

_"'Cause cheerleading is stupid, that's why," Haley said without missing a beat. "I feel like spending the afternoon doing absolutely nothing. Want to join me?"_

_"Absolutely. So are you going to see the musical this weekend?"_

_"_Peter Pan_ isn't really my kinda thing."_

_"I have to go because Phoebe's in it," Angelina sighed. "But it's not really my thing either. She says she's never seen Bernie get through the whole 'If you believe in fairies' spiel without snickering."_

_"Bernie's fine, though."_

_"He's a sleaze."_

_She had barely finished those words when the world went dark around her, as two hands clamped over her eyes. She let a stack of notebooks fly out of her arms in surprise._

_"Guess who?" a male voice whispered in her ear._

_Her heart, which had started to beat again after the initial shock, sped up in the blink of an eye._

_The next voice she heard was Haley's. "Hey, it's the Sentinel maker's kid! Where'd you disappear to?"_

_A bone-weary sigh. "Don't. Call. Me. That."_

_"Larry?" Not that it really could have been anyone else, but that didn't stop her from saying his name in undignified bafflement. She remembered thinking during their first date that it was all wrong. She should have been dating a Malcolm or a Justin or a Blane. Someone with angst, someone who stood out in a crowd. Someone _alternative_, for Goddess' sake. Instead… "Is that you?"_

_He removed his hands from her eyes. "More or less."_

_"I'm dreaming," she replied. She'd never seen him like this before, but she was still trying to get her mind around the fact that she was seeing him at all. "This is, like, Standard Reunion Dream #3."_

_Haley looked like she desperately wanted to ask what the first two Standard Reunion Dreams were, but was holding her tongue._

_"You're awake," he assured her. When he smiled, he looked a lot more like his old self._

_"You're really here," she said wonderingly. "Um, Haley, I'll catch you later, okay?"_

_"Don't do anything I wouldn't do."_

_Angelina turned back to Larry. "You're really here," she said again, then surprised herself by actually giggling. She flung her arms around his neck, right there in front of the school, where anyone could have seen._

_"I missed you so much." He actually sounded like he was choking out the words._

_She frowned. "Are you okay?"_

_"Better, now that I've seen you."_

Watch me melt. Just watch me. _"I didn't expect to see you until graduation," she said, frowning. Something wasn't right. It wasn't just how exhausted he looked — if she'd spent the last eight hours on the road, she wouldn't be feeling or looking very bouncy, either. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something was fundamentally _wrong_ with his presence here. Not just the fact that he was here, because there was _nothing_ wrong with that, but… why couldn't she be more specific, even to herself? _Because you're being ridiculous, that's why, _she told herself._ What's next, reading people's auras?

"Surprise."

_"I've gotta be dreaming."_

Instead of answering, he pulled her close again and kissed her. It felt more real than anything had in a long, long time.


	22. Circles of Truth

Chapter 21: Circles of Truth

It didn't feel great to be hanging out in the school auditorium during summer, but at least they were there for something besides a boring school assembly.

Although not a few people still referred to them as "the Involved" (or the "Self-Involved" as someone who had stopped going to meetings fairly early on had termed them), the group's official name was the Helix Alliance, voted on during their first meeting last winter. Teresa privately thought that it sounded like the title of a bad Japanese animation series, but kept her mouth shut. Whether or not the anime fans in the group beat her to a pulp, whatever they thought up in its place would probably be worse.

Although it had started as a support group, the Alliance had become something so much more in the past few months. Random teenagers who supported mutants had started showing up, telling about their experiences, suggesting ways to raise awareness of the issue in school.

Mr. Hudson, the summer mediator, had started talking about "mixed families." He was an unknown quantity to Teresa, who had never completely warmed up to Ms. Do-Gooder Green and her "circles of truth." Her scratchy-voiced replacement was doing an okay job so far. "Everyone move up and fill the first three rows," he called. "I don't want to have to shout."

The teenagers in the back of the room, who had obviously been trying to look inconspicuous, gave him their best hairy eyeballs and sidled to the rows in question. There weren't even enough people there to fill up all the seats Mr. Hudson had indicated — maybe eight or ten in all had shown up. Either he wanted to pretend that the number was greater or he was being flexible about people's seating preferences.

"Mixed families," he rasped. "Does everyone know what I'm referring to?"

A ninth-grader wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a colorful headband put up her hand.

"You don't have to do that, er…"

"Caroline," someone else chimed in. "School's over."

"Um, yeah," Caroline said. "Do you mean, humans who marry mutants, or have kids who are, or what?"

"I mean either one. It doesn't matter."

"Okay, yeah. This is all, like, confidential, right?"

"Sure," Felix Mitchell assured her.

"Let's say, maybe, my mom was engaged to a mutant." Caroline blushed deeply. "I mean, he doesn't say he is, but he's living with us, and he's really freakishly strong — I mean, like a weight lifter, seriously — but he's spooked by the weirdest things. They've been going out for years, but he had to travel a lot — because of his job — and his letters were always full of things that he wasn't saying. Does that make sense?"

_Wishing she had someone to stand outside the door to her mother's room, to stand guard. Not because she's scared of getting caught, even though she is, but because she wishes there was someone else to embark on this little guilty forbidden fascinating quest with her._ "Yeah," Teresa said aloud. "It makes sense." _The letters are tied up all neat with ribbon. If whatever happened between the two of them was bad enough to make Mom never want to talk about him, why did she save these._

_Dearest Maeve._

She admired Caroline, she really did. If she'd had a story to tell, it would have taken three or four meetings to drag it out of her, and even then, she wouldn't have told it all. The ninth-grader, however, had told all the first time she had spoken out.

_Dearest Maeve, I'm sorry we have to spend so much time apart._

How could she not have thought of the letters until now?

_You think it's your doing. You couldn't be more wrong._

What had been the voice that had gone with those words?

_You think it's you're doing._

She wished Violet were here. Or Brett. Or Ev. Or anyone who said that soon she'd be seeing mutants everywhere.

"I mean, what if they have kids together?" Caroline went on. "And what if the kids are like him? Not 'like-him' bad, 'cause he isn't, but 'like-him' different?"

She wished she could blame it on paranoia, or the simple explanation that she'd been coming here _way_ too long. _Caroline's not sure_, she told herself. _And I shouldn't be sure either. I feel for her because I can't possibly call her paranoid, not with the way I'm thinking. Because she has actual evidence, which is more than most people have when they suspect that they're keeping company with freaks. Or are related to them, for that matter. Which is more than I have, too. No matter how much it would explain._

**

_Dear Me,_

_Writing to myself: self-expression or sign of mental illness?_

_Mom turned me loose this afternoon with my allowance and orders not to come back until I'd received fresh air and been suitably invigorated. She added "Hop to it!" and I don't know whether I should have laughed or rolled my eyes. So I did both. And then I got on my bike and just started riding. Took the long way into town. If I didn't have a problem with the way Mom talks sometimes — like she's trying too hard to Relate — then I would have admitted that she was right. I do feel better._

_I hung around for a while, first by myself, then with Teresa. We ended up walking to the ice cream place where her boyfriend is working. She kept blowing him kisses from our table. When I was crushing on Louis last year (assuming in my INFINITE WISDOM that since we were no longer really friends, it was OK to stalk him by the school vending machines) I swore I'd never do anything like that, but it seems like one of the trademarks of being a Happy Couple._

_And if you assume that Louis doesn't count, the closest I've come to a Relationship lately is with the opposite sex is this guy I've been chatting online with. He says that he goes to school around here during the year, but hasn't given a name. Very very mysterious. Guess he could be a pedophile or an evil terrorist. Doubt it somehow._

_Haven't had much experience with the non-dating part of TEEN LIFE, either. Last true friend I had was Nina — you know, back in fifth grade. When I moved, she and I were all "Friends forever." We wrote and emailed and sometimes talked on the phone for the next year and a half, and then she got a whole bunch of new friends and all of sudden it was like, we had never really had anything in common to begin with. Same with Louis. Is it them? Or is it me?_

_Anywho, Teresa and I talked about the college-related noises her mom was making and I asked her if she could seriously picture me getting a summer job like she and Brett have. Then she started talked about how INTERESTING it had been in group that day, and I think that's why I didn't stay long. I guess I shouldn't expect to be able to run scared whenever the subject of mutants comes up, because it's been coming up a lot and it's not going to stop. I guess this is something that's been on a lot of minds lately. I guess that's the understatement of the year. I guess maybe I should stop being such a wannabe-AGP and sign off now._

_XOXOXOXO_

_Vi_

_Final note on IceFemme. I checked in @ the chat today, and no sign of her. Word's that she hasn't been there for the past few days. At first I didn't really know her like I would a friend. I mean I knew what the other chatters knew — her real name, that she's from St. Louis, and that she's been able to turn invisible — mostly at will — for the past couple of months. But I guess that now she considers me enough of a friend to ask me if I know of anyplace she should go. What am I supposed to tell her?_

_Gotta go now for real._

**

Only a little more than a week after she had sworn that there was no place in her present life for such voices from the past, Violet found herself shoving aside a pair of shoes that she never wore anymore and a math textbook from two years ago which she'd thought lost forever and ended up paying the school for, and digging out the notebooks that Phoebe had sent her. She could have made up the excuse that she was curious, or that the journals might have given her some clue about how she could help someone she didn't even technically _know_, or — perhaps closest of all — that she wanted something to _think_ about this summer. What had really spurred her decision, however, was a nasty thought, a stray question: _What present life?_

The rule against climbing on top of the roof still stood, but neither of her parents were home, and rules were meant to be broken. She dug her heels in a little more firmly against the shingles, made sure she was absolutely balanced, then opened the first notebook to the first page.

_August 31_

With a father, a sister, and a boyfriend who care about me, and a mother who I sometimes think almost cares about me, you'd think that I would feel pretty safe most of the time. Like there was always a hand reaching out for me. And you're right. Most of the time, I do feel that way. But there are times, especially lately, when I feel like they'll never understand, and I need to talk to someone who won't judge me. Therapy's out. I guess I should consider you my therapist, except cheaper.

I haven't kept a journal since fourth grade. Back then, it was a requirement for school and a joke, since Mr. Sesko read everything we wrote and put his little comments in the margins. "That sounds interesting!!" he would write, or, "Why do you imagine you felt this way???" If they thought Angel had suppressed rage (which sometimes even I think she did), then they probably I had some sort of inner angst that I was hiding.

Violet smiled to herself. Now _that_ sounded like Phoebe.

Reese, who works at a New Agey store in town, once asked me if I believed in paranormal powers. "You know," he said as if I didn't get it. "Clairvoyance, precognition, telepathy." Guess who didn't jump when he mentioned that last one? Congratulate me!!!

Why, besides the obvious reason, would the mention of telepathy make Phoebe so nervous? _Well, I don't know that it _was_ anything besides the obvious reason_, she told herself. _What else could it be?_

The next entry had been penned a week later, and was mostly all about Phoebe's relationship with that Reese guy. She'd dragged him to one of Charity's end-of-summer parties once, and they'd spent practically the entire time intertwined. He'd called Violet "cute" and "spunky" and she could vaguely see, now, how she could have had a crush on him if she hadn't still been mystified by the opposite sex.

More familiar faces seemed to float up from the pages. Jasmine Shelley, Phoebe's best girl friend; the two of them had had some kind of falling out which had either resulted from or led to Jasmine's joining the Friends of Humanity. Delia Foxworth, one of the "vultures" who had come to their door. And Angelina, of course. Bright spots, for better or for worse, raisins in the tapioca that was Wallglass. Violet felt an abrupt rush of nostalgia that she should have expected but hadn't.

_"How're you holding up, anyway?"___

_"How do you think?"___

_"I'm sorry about everything that happened, Vi."_

_"Me, too."_

_"You know, you could have told me."___

_"We weren't supposed to tell anyone. What'd your parents say?"___

_"They said I couldn't come over to your house anymore."_

_"Why? He's not contagious."_

_"You know that. I know that. Mama and Papa don't know that. Vi, I'm sorry. Hey, we can still see each other here at school, right?"_

Nina. Her first and last best friend. Accepting everything despite a family and church that, as far as Violet could see, accepted very little. She wished the two of them had stayed in touch all of a sudden. She wondered if Nina would still understand, or if the last few years had made her less of a bright spot. If she'd given in. People changed.

Violet turned her attention back to the notebook. Despite all the familiar faces, there was one that was very obviously missing. Four years trying to fill the role of miniature matchmaker had taught her to look for the less obvious connections between the two of them, but so far, Phoebe hadn't mentioned Stephen once. If she hadn't caught the "X-Geeks" reference in the first entry, and known why the previous year had been _"one that I would absolutely love to forget," _ Violet wouldn't have guessed that Phoebe knew he'd existed at all.

More than ever, she was positive that this had been a bad idea. Who was she helping here, anyway? Not herself, and definitely not Ice.

But she kept reading anyway.


	23. Conversation Pieces

Chapter 22: Conversation Pieces

"Don't ask me, I'm just an innocent bystander."

She tosses her hair. "I didn't know that people actually said that."

"_I_ say it," the young man says seriously. He's large, well-built, with dark hair in sideburns, and wearing a standard-issue-esque green T-shirt. "I take it you've already talked to the cops?"

"Yeah," she says, scribbling something in her notebook. She hasn't changed much. Her hair, in turn, is back to its natural hair color — at least, one must assume that it's natural — and cut in a short, unfamiliar style. She's dressed simply, conservatively, and that's even more surprising. But he'd know her anywhere. Her entire look is different, but the person behind those glittering eyes hasn't changed a bit.

"And they've told you, what?" He gives her an encouraging sort of smile. 

"Nada. I should probably just stick to Arts and Entertainment. Save the stories about underground mutants for the ones who are more convinced that it's true."

"Who do you write for?" her new companion asks. By now, the outer edges of the crowds have begun to drift away.

"Anything that'll take me. By the way, I'm —"

"— Angelina Corlisle," he finishes for her. "You said that when you first started asking me questions. I'm Michael Timmons. I work for the park."

_Larry blinked and took a step back. He was standing in front of Angelina's school, the sun was in his face, and she was looking at him oddly. Very oddly. "You okay?"_

_"I'm fine." He tried to shake off the vision, with some amount of success. To tell her… it probably wasn't a good idea in the first place, but it was a terrible idea now. Too many people around._

_She asked him how long he was staying._

_"For just the weekend, probably. Then…"_

_"Then what?" she wanted to know._

_"Never mind."_

_"Fine." She had the feeling (oooh) that things were a long way from "never mind" but she wasn't going to push it. "Where?"_

_"Playing it by ear."_

_Why did she have the feeling that he hadn't thought this through at _all_? "Great, my boyfriend's a homeless weirdo."_

_"Hey, I _have_ a home," Larry protested. "I'm just a place-to-stay-less weirdo."_

_"Don't even think about it."_

_"Huh?"_

_"We have a perfectly nice guest room," she elaborated._

_"Will your mom mind?"_

_Joanne had gotten a new position at Shelley's Restaurant not too long ago, and was in a better mood about plenty of things now that she didn't have to be on her feet all day. Whether having her daughter's boyfriend spend the weekend with them without prior notice was one of those things… well, that was debatable, but Angelina thought she might be able to maneuver if she made it clear that there would be two ceilings between them after the sun went down. However, before she could say, _Even if she doesn't, you'll stay anyway_, someone behind her cleared his throat._

_Stephen had joined them, sporting a shirt that read _Just Because I'm Paranoid…Well, You Know The Drill. _The expression on his face was surprisingly cheerful, especially considering his and Larry's mutual distrust during the time after the now-infamous Valentine's Day dance. "What's up?"_

_"Nothing much," Larry replied, his eyes sliding from side to side in a where's-the-nearest-exit kind of way that Angelina couldn't figure. She had thought he was over that. He had _better_ be._

_"How long are you here for?"_

_"Couple of days."_

_A ghost of suspicion crossed Stephen's face, so quickly that Angelina was sure she'd imagined it. "What's the occasion?"_

_"Just came to see Angel." _

_She realized that she was beaming again, and didn't even try to hide it._

_"Cool. Are you going to be at Phoebe's play tomorrow night?"_

_"That's tomorrow? I dunno. Maybe."_

_"Cool," Stephen repeated. "I gotta go. See you both later." And he vanished into the sea of cars and voices and Friday-afternoon excitement of the parking lot._

_"So," Angelina said, "I'm just curious — why aren't you staying with your dad's friends?"_

_"Oh. Um." Larry shifted his feet. "I can't. He'd… I mean, they'd…"_

_She lowered her voice. A couple of her classmates who were passing by stared at her. "Is something wrong at home?" she asked. There was no trace of a smile in her voice now._

_He sighed. "Not here. Listen, my car's over there, so if you don't have any other plans, let's go talk to your mom."_

_"I like this whole take-charge thing you've got going all of a sudden. Let me just go inside and give Phoebe her keys back. She'll freak when she finds out you're here." And she disappeared back through the door._

_Larry leaned against the scratchy brick wall, trying to feel as calm and together as he thought — and hoped — he looked. _Okay,_ he told himself. _ Everything's cool. As far as she knows, I'm just here for a visit that I maybe didn't plan out as well as I could have. And right now, she's so happy to see me that she hasn't even stopped to consider that there might be something a little weird about my showing up. Should I take advantage of that and tell her now? Should I wait until her head's clearer? Should I forget the whole thing and just enjoy my time with her before I have to decide what I'm going to do next? Who was that guy I "saw" her with? Will we still be together by then? Should I be mad at her for going off with some guy she hasn't even met yet?

_And possibly the most unpleasant question of all: _Did another person find me out? Am I going to have to be careful around him from now on? More careful, I mean.

_Maybe he should just save his strength for the inevitable conversation with Joanne. On the other, hand he had recently faced an end to his own humanity, not to mention dealing with his father's wrath and with Rogue's advances. This should be a piece of cake._

**

_"Angelina, are you sure about this?"_

_"I'm sure. I just thought you ought to know what he's doing here. He's only staying for the weekend." Joanne raised her eyebrows. "In the guest room," Angelina added, rolling her own eyes. "Don't worry, we're planning on keeping our clothes on at all times."_

_"Damn." Larry immediately felt like cringing at the twin glares he received at his feeble attempt at a joke. He thought again about how much Angelina resembled her mother when she was angry, and about how he'd better keep that one to himself, for the sake of not having his throat slit if nothing else. "Ms. Corlisle, I promise I'll be, um…" He wracked his brains. "A respectful guest. I know that people have reason to be nervous about weird people staying in their houses, but I swear to God I'm not going to suck your brains out while you sleep."_

_"Charming," Joanne muttered. "Well, you _are_ eighteen; I guess I can't tell you who you can and can't invite here forever."_

_Larry and Angelina stared at each other. It couldn't be that easy. No parting shot? No cross-examination? No "ground rules"? Growing up, he and Tanya had practically had to fill out an application form before having unfamiliar people over to spend the night. "That's right," Angelina said with just enough gratitude to show that she appreciated it, but the right amount of self-satisfaction to show how much more she appreciated that she'd gotten her way without a fight. He envied her that._

_"However, he'd better _not_ go back on his word about being a respectful guest."_

_Larry gave his best charming grin. "I promise."_

_"Oh, by the way" — and here her sharp eyes landed on him — "do your parents know where you are?"_

_"Sure." _Second time in twenty-four hours that someone's asked me that. I guess I should get used to it._ "Obstacle number one, check," he muttered to himself as Joanne stalked out of the living room._

_Angelina heard him. "What?"_

_"Nothing. How do you do that?"_

_"How do I do what?"_

_"Get her to listen to you."_

_Angelina laughed. "It wasn't always this easy."_

_"On your birthday, you practically threw in her face that she couldn't legally boss you around anymore," he recalled. "That party was an experience."_

_"Most parties are _experiences_. That one was a phenomenon in its own time."_

_"You have to admit, I was a great conversation piece."_

_"You came to my door dressed like a vampire. How could it _not_ be a conversation piece? Even if it wasn't your idea."_

_"How do you know it wasn't?"_

_"Because it sounds exactly like something Stephen would think up."_

_"Give me a little credit here. I didn't go asking Stephen for advice." _And I hope I never have to_, he added silently. "He asked me how I was going to surprise you, I said I didn't know, he reminded me that you liked vampires, and I took it from there."_

_"Then you took it pretty far."_

_"Were you surprised."_

_"I was surprised," she confessed. "Well, Count Traskula, I'm glad to see you again."_

_"Count _what_?"_

_"You heard me."_

_"Can't we just stick with 'Larry, Son of Evil'?"_

**

_Angelina had to work into the evening. He offered to give her a ride, and she said she needed the fresh air. "Unless you want to come and stick around," she added. "Very amusing people come to the video store on Friday nights. Dateless wonders, mostly."_

_He had declined. With Phoebe at her rehearsal and Joanne also at work, there was no better time to do what he probably shouldn't have been doing. Not only was it stupid, risky, and long-distance, he had no idea what he'd say._

_As it turned out, that didn't even seem to be an issue at first. After five rings, his own voice, effecting a ridiculous accent, came traveling down the wire. "Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father! Prepare to leave a message at the sound of the beep!"_ *

_There was no way in hell he was leaving a message. He was just about to hang up when he heard a couple of unmistakable clicks, followed by his sister's voice. "I've got it, hello?"_

Say something.

_"Hel-_lo_!"_

Just say something._ "Are you alone?"_

_"Is this an obscene phone call?" she asked suspiciously. "Because if you come anywhere near here, I'll karate chop you into submission."_

_"No, it's not. It's me." Dead silence. "Tanya, are you there?"_

_"Are you _okay_?" she asked. "I thought you'd, like, driven off a cliff or something."_

_"No such luck."_

_"Where are you?"_

_"With Angelina."_

_"I thought so."_

_He hesitated, then asked, "Are _you_ okay?"_

_Another silence. "I've been better."_

Tanya admitting weakness… now there's a first._ "He's not there, is he?" He didn't think she was dumb enough to acknowledge whom she was talking to if someone had been listening in, but he had to make sure._

_Sure enough, "No. He hasn't been here all day." She didn't sound like she was crying yet, but the connection wasn't great, so he couldn't tell whether that scratching noise was just a malfunction in the phone lines or not. "Can I say something without you getting mad?"_

_"I'll try."_

_"I think he does want to help you. He just doesn't know how."_

_"Well, what's he going to do? Invent a magic charm that takes away my powers?" He knew, even though they were miles apart, that Tanya was wincing at that last word. "Because _that's_ what he wants. To fix it so I can't go against him. And if you're going along with it…"_

_"I'm not 'going along with it'!" she snapped. "I don't want you to be… suppressed… or whatever, I just want you to come home."_

_"I can't. Not yet." Now she was definitely crying. He was sure of it. "Tanya, it's going to be okay. " He worked the words around the lump in his own throat, the days when he used to condemn her tearful outbursts as a play for attention temporarily forgotten. "I can see the future, remember? I know that everything's going to be fine." He hadn't been hit with another vision since that fleeting image of Joanne removing a small, chortling boy from what looked like a dryer, but there was no reason for his sister to know that. And anyway, his assurance was less a premonition than a promise._

A/N: Yes, that answering-machine message was yet another _Princess Bride _reference. If you're surprised that so many characters in the Saga like that movie, you'd be even more surprised at how few people I know who haven't seen it.


	24. The Squeegee Avenger

Chapter 23: The Squeegee Avenger

The more Violet read, the more she was surprised. She'd never had even the slightest clue that Phoebe's experiences had been bad enough to send her into therapy. In the true Phoebe tradition of never asking for help unless the potential helper's integrity could be scientifically proven, she'd practically gone in kicking and screaming, but it was still therapy, and from the outsider perspective, it seemed like the path of least resistance.

But that was nothing.

_Just woke up. My hand's shaking so badly that it missed the light switch the first time, and it's a good thing nobody's ever going to read this._

_Nightmares stopped for a while, but started again after the last conversation I had with Mr. Hotshot X-Man. I didn't mean that. Yes I did. No I didn't.___

How had Phoebe known about the X-Men? Not that Violet knew much about them herself — just that it was the nickname that Stephen's friends at the Institute had given themselves, that they went through weird kinds of training exercises, and that they wore weirder spandex outfits while doing so. He'd also mentioned some kind of rivalry with their mutant classmates, but hadn't gone into detail, and she hadn't asked, not sure that she really wanted to know.

_She wouldn't have told me everything,_ she reasoned. _ I mean, let's face it, I'm just her best friend's little sister. _She turned her eyes back to the page. The whole thing was written in a shaky hand, and some words slanted right off the ruled lines.

_Or sometimes he doesn't say anything at all, just picks through my mind and laughs and laughs._

_When I used to baby-sit Violet, she would wake up screaming about strange creatures in the closet. I would turn on the light, open the closet door, and tell her that there was nothing there to hurt her. She said not to open it again when it was dark, because the monster could get inside her head. I would tell her that there were no monsters that could do that._

_Now I know better._

Violet realized she was shaking a little. Not uncontrollably, not in blind panic, definitely not the way she remembered shaking when

_"I couldn't keep him out of my head. Make it stop."_

No. No. She'd imagined that. It had just been a bad dream.

But her sudden case of the shakes didn't come from any kind of embarrassed exhilaration, either, like when she was watching scary movies on TV.

_Or sometimes he doesn't say anything at all._

"He" who?

And why was she even trying to kid herself by asking that question? It wasn't like New England was positively crawling with telepaths, and since the voice had mentioned Stephen by name… Not that he could have been the one preying on Phoebe's mind, anyway. Not in a million years.

That was when she glanced at the clock and realized how late it was. And that it was June, not October, and that she was in Princeton, not Wallglass, and that there was no reason for her to be getting the creeps because of some bitch of a nightmare that her friend had had five years ago.

_I'll get in touch with Ice again tomorrow_, she resolved._ And tell her — well, I don't know what I'll tell her._

Then she fell asleep. If she had any of the bad dreams that, for some reason, she expected, she didn't remember them.

**

Krackel: So what'd you tell her?

shy_violet: What I could.

Krackel: Very cryptic.

shy_violet: I told her that yes, there was a place where she could go, but she should think about it carefully.

Krackel: It's true what they say.

shy_violet: And what's that?

Krackel: You really do have connections.

shy_violet: I really don't.

Krackel: Am I supposed to believe you're just lucky?

shy_violet: Absolutely not. Subject change, please.

Krackel: Done. What have you been up to?

shy_violet: Nothing, unfortunately. Yourself?

Krackel: Haircut that makes me look even more like a geek. Summer job. KILL MAIM DESTROY.

shy_violet: ???????????

Krackel: I'm working in a computer store. My boss is a jerk. I've only been working here a couple of days and I've

shy_violet: You've

Krackel: You don't want to hear this.

shy_violet: Try me.

Krackel: I've already heard him say three times, "I pay you to unpack parts from bubble wrap, not to advise the customers. This is your last warning."

shy_violet: :( I should probably get one of those job-type-things, but I won't be 16 for another month.

Krackel: You can always baby-sit.

shy_violet: Chauvinist.

Krackel: First I'm a geek, then I'm a chauvinist.

shy_violet: Them's the breaks.

Krackel: I was serious. You good with kids?

shy_violet: I used to take care of my cousins when they lived nearby. Big family, someone's always busy.

Krackel: Go for it. So what's the place?

shy_violet: Come again?

Krackel: The place you told Ice about. Come on, who would I tell?

shy_violet: Besides everyone in the chat?

Krackel: First I'm a geek, then I'm a chauvinist, then I have no integrity. How about this. Smiley face if it's the Xavier Institute, frowny face if it's not.

shy_violet: :) But maybe it should be :o

Krackel: Thought so. If that's where you're sending her, you showed good judgment. Charles Xavier knows what he's doing, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he set up a safehouse for society's outcasts. But since you don't want to talk about it

shy_violet: You're right.

Krackel: So, are you going to be following Phoebe Corlisle's tour on TV?

shy_violet: You a fan of hers? LOL LOL LOL!

Krackel: Shut. It. She's got a killer voice.

shy_violet: You just buy her posters to hang on the wall above your bed.

Krackel: Big scowl.

shy_violet: Thought so. Lemme guess. It's the one where she's got her head thrown back Little-Mermaid style.

Krackel: So I had a tiny crush on her last year. I bet you have one on Nate Eldridge from Skill Monsters.

shy_violet: I agree with Harley. He's so

Krackel: So what?

shy_violet: So varnished. I don't care if he's telekinetic or not, he's just a revamped Justin Timberlake.

Krackel: Better not let Dallas hear you say that.

shy_violet: What, you mean about Justin Timberlake? He is so five years ago. If then.

Krackel: I mean about Nate.

shy_violet: Dallas has issues.

Krackel: He's harmless.

shy_violet: He still has issues. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

**

Violet removed a notepad from her pocket, meaning to copy down the information from the flier, before she realized she'd forgotten to bring anything to write with. "'Scuse me," she said to the person whose footsteps she'd heard behind her. "Do you have a pen I could borrow?" She turned all the way around to find herself face to face with Louis Walter. "Oh, um…"

He handed her a ballpoint pen. "Here."

"Thanks." He had come up behind Violet while she was looking at Help Wanted signs on the supermarket bulletin board. It was slim pickings. Her eyes had just swept over an ad for a dog walker and one for a window washer when she heard the familiar voice. _I could totally be a window washer,_ she'd been thinking. _Riding in that harness, swinging across the walls of buildings, leaving the windows sparkling and no other trace of myself behind. Never taking the credit. The Squeegee Avenger._ "So, um, what's up?" she asked out loud.

"I'm looking for a summer job." As usual, Louis was disdaining the teenage male prerogative to look as disheveled as possible. He wore an alligator shirt, and his pants looked like they'd been ironed. Even his baseball cap was actually turned the right way. "I guess I could always work here. It's gotta be better than the drive-through."

"You're going to be a senior next year, right?" As if she didn't know, but it was something to say. She wondered why she was even talking to him — he was, after all, the leader of the group that had been harassing Teresa. _And why is he even talking to me? I guess word's already gotten around that I'm not a Helix Ally or whatever anymore._

"Yeah. I want to go to Princeton. Really badly. That's why I need a job."

"You really want to be a supermarket guy?" she asked skeptically.

"Sure. How about you?"

"Baby-sitting, probably."

He glanced at the half-sheet of paper that she'd found mostly hidden behind the window-washer flier. "She lives on my street, so I think you'll be able to get there okay."

Violet blushed. Had she really been that transparent, or was he referring to when she used to hang out at his house after for-real being invited in? She longed to ask him, but was worried that it would be a _"Who told you?" "You just did"_ kind of moment. Before she could stop herself, she pointed to the pin on his cap. "So, you're still in the FOH?"

"Yeah. You're still not?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"People you'd never expect show up at those meetings."

"I bet. One second they're watering their lawns or making plans for drive-in night, the next they're rallying for mutant registration." _Spoken like someone who actually knows what she's talking about_. She hadn't had the heart to flip on the TV and search for updates on the seemingly endless political banter between sniveling Senator Kelly and the slightly less sniveling people who opposed him. Half-forgotten advice that there were no good guys or bad guys in politics — who had told her that, one of her parents? A teacher? — made her understand them less, not more. There definitely seemed to be good guys and bad guys here, but which was which depended on where your own opinions lay.

_Or what your connections are_, a familiar, nasty voice inside her spoke up. She finished writing everything down, gave him a sort of "see-you-later" wave, and turned in the opposite direction for home.

Her own mental images of the "type" all resembled Jeff Price — fierce, delinquent, sneering. _And I guess I'm not completely… um, not justified… in thinking of them that way, stereotypes or no stereotypes._ One of the things she remembered best about the final days of her friendship with Louis was debating furiously whether to accept it as a character flaw or try to play Clarisse McClellan to his Guy Montag. (Although she'd loved _Fahrenheit 451_ and still reread it whenever she got the chance, she had to wonder how many of her classmates had looked at the Mechanical Hound in the same way that the last generation of Bradbury fans had.) Since the statement of "you shouldn't" always prompted the response of "well, why not?" she'd made several attempts to make him see what an idiot he'd been, but had given up before they quite got to that stage.

_That was the beginning of the end_, she reflected as the set off for home. _I've always wanted to say that about something._ Sometimes, when she caught sight of his old-money good looks from across the hall, she wondered whether he might be worth another shot. She would have liked to be able to say something like _seeing myself as his saving grace from the forces of eeeevil wouldn't be fair to him_, but that had never occurred to her, and she settled instead for, _He probably already has a girlfriend. And anyway, I have a… what?_

She didn't know _what_ Krackel was. She'd had — what — three or four online conversations with him, and now she was beginning to feel like talking to another guy would be cheating on him? What was _up_ with that? She'd heard of girls carrying on online relationships — Caroline, for one, talked about hers for all to hear at the lunch table — but it wasn't like he'd declared their communication one of _those_. Still, she could at least call him a friend, and — especially now — she could definitely use one of those. Even better that it was someone funny, and smart, and interested in the Issues to a point of extremes. He didn't strike her as the type who would go on the news insisting that he was _Homo superior_ born into a _Homo sapien_ body, but…

_Point exactly, Violet Gertrude._ She'd always been able to identify her own inner voice of reason by its tendency to use her middle name. _He doesn't _strike you_ as the type. But what he _strikes_ you as and what he actually _is_ are two different things. You have to take his word for everything. You don't know that he's really who he says he is…_

_…any more than I really know that Ice is who she says she is. I could have given the purpose of the Xavier Institute away to a retired nutcase who gets his kicks by pretending to be a teenage girl, or a wishful-thinker who thinks that being a mutant would just be the coolest thing ever. _

All of which she was sure her parents would remind her of if they ever found out.

_I did the right thing. Didn't I?_

**

When she entered her house, the first thing she heard was — surprise, surprise — voices from behind her parents' closed bedroom door. Although she didn't exactly press her ear to the wall, she did stop and listen for half a minute.

"…took a job in the city. He's going to stay there and wait for Phoebe."

"It's the sensible thing."

"I know. I just feel sorry for both of them."

"And Vi knows?"

"She knows." So why were they pretending she _didn't_ know? Then Charity said something that Violet knew she was going to have to try her very best to forget: "I'm so worried about him. I always have been. Why can't she see that?"


	25. Paranoia Strikes Deep

Chapter 24: Paranoia Strikes Deep

_The main cast of _Peter Pan_ were crowded two booths and a table at Trisha's, the coffee shop on Maxwell Street. The light outside was fading, and the air was altogether too warm, but none of the post-dress-rehearsal gatherers minded. The "run-through" had felt, at times, more like the tech the night before, and it was finally over._

_Phoebe was squashed next to the window, Bernie's smelly sneakers resting on her left thigh. His legs stretched across three laps, including that of his girlfriend, Ali, who was playing Tiger Lily. "So who else is glad it's going to be over in a couple of nights?" he was asking. "Anyone besides me?"_

_"I thought you liked being on stage," Ali said with a frown._

_Bernie grinned. "I'll stick to playing bass. Reese never makes us wear tights to gigs." _

_Phoebe joined in the laughter, although it wasn't actually all that funny. She was on a perfect high, although she couldn't honestly say whether it came from the successful rehearsal, from her acceptance to NYU, or from the giant iced coffee of which she was making fast work. _

_"So are you guys really going on the road this summer?" Ariel Roberts asked._

_Bernie said they were, and added that it was going to be so sweet. "The sooner we get out of this shit-hole, the better."_

_"Some people want to stay here, though," Carl Norris put in._

_Phoebe took another sip of her drink. "I can't believe Kevin proposed to her. I mean, I used to play Barbies with that girl."_

_"You think she's pregnant?" Bernie shifted his feet on her lap._

_"_Jasmine_? God, that would be scary. If she is, I don't know about it."_

_"I thought the two of you were, like, friends."_

_"We talk to each other," she said truthfully. Talked to each other in a friendly, cautious way, trying to attribute increasingly less and less importance to the conflict that had split them apart. When you saw your intelligent, confident, fair-minded girl friend become an anti-mutant automaton who let her significant other make decisions for her, it shouldn't have been that much of a strain to picture her in any situation, but married with kids at the age of eighteen was pushing it a bit. Both she and Kevin had left the Friends of Humanity a couple of months back, but — what was the saying? Fences were hard to mend? Burnt bridges were hard to — do something with? "I don't know if she'd tell me something like that or not. And she's not as ditzy as she was for a while. I don't know, maybe she'd make a great mom. I guess I can't imagine any other reason why she'd want to stay here."_

_"I can't think of any reason why _anyone_ would want to stay here," Bernie agreed._

_"But it's not like we have a choice," Phil Petrie — Captain Hook in the play — cut in. "I mean, a whole lot of choices. When we're dating people, I mean."_

_"Yeah," Jordan Ohlinger agreed, stabbing her complicated French twist with a succession of bobby pins. "You can stay here together, you can go to college together, or you can break up."_

_"Or you can stay together but go to different schools," Phoebe added._

_"If you believe in fairies, clap your hands," Bernie said with a snort. "Hey, I didn't laugh this time. Go me!"_

_"What, do you want a biscuit?" Ali asked._

_He leered at her. "I'll take what I can get."_

_"What's that supposed to mean?" Phoebe cut in._

_Bernie looked surprised. "If you don't get _that_ —"_

_She rolled her eyes. "No, I mean the first part."_

_"I think he's saying that it's hard for couples to be true to each other when they're in new places," Ariel explained._

_"With new people," Carl agreed with a suggestive smile of his own._

_Phoebe flushed, her good mood quickly fading. She and Stephen would be going to school within driving distance of one another. They'd see each other often enough. There was no way that either of them would be giving in to temptation from someone else._

Does it really go both ways?_ her inner voice asked, just as insidiously as the mocking, condescending questions from the rest of the small crowd whom she probably wouldn't be hanging out with if not for the performance. She crunched a small piece of ice and tried to smile, the cold feeling in her mouth making up for the new, colder one in the pit of her stomach. She knew she could consider herself lucky. Her classmates hadn't turned her into a pariah, she was going to a great school, she was madly and deliriously in love with the boy who she was meant to… what? Spend her life with? Was that what staying committed to each other would eventually lead to? Most importantly, however, she had stopped holding her breath whenever stories about mutants appeared on the news, and the voice that asked, _Do you _want_ it to go both ways?_ had kept quiet._

_"Hey." Phil poked Bernie from across the table._

_"Poke me again and you're dead."_

_"No, speaking of new people, check her out." Phil pointed to a tall, stunning, blonde girl sitting alone at the counter._

_"Hello!" Ali snapped._

_"I don't mean for him," Phil elaborated. "What does anybody think?"_

_"Just don't say, 'So, you live around here often?'" Bernie cautioned._

_Phil called him something he'd no doubt picked up from the latest episode of _South Park_. "That was _once_."_

_"You should have seen his face."_

_"Shut up, she's looking at us." Phil raised his hand and waggled his fingers at the blonde, casting her a sheepish grin, like, I don't know what I'm doing with these losers._

_Phoebe, who had been thinking something pretty close to the same thing, was jerked out of her musings with a start as the blonde advanced toward them with a triumphant, "I _thought_ it was you."_

_It took a long moment for anyone at the table to place her. Phoebe was the one to finally venture, "Isobel?"_

_"Hey, Phoebe."_

_"What're you doing back in town?" Ali wanted to know._

_"Visiting relatives." Isobel made the sour face — once her default expression — that Angelina had taken to calling "Isobel-ancholy." Her blue eyes swept across the crowd, from preppie Phil to the terminally bookish Ali, and representations of all social cliques in between. Despite the silver shadow on the lids. — she had never worn makeup in all the time she and Phoebe had been friends — staring at that expression was like taking a glimpse into the past. "So since when do all of you hang out together?"_

_"Since the cast list for _Peter Pan_ went up." Looking back, Phoebe thought she should have realized there was something a little strange about that question, but at the present moment, the thought hadn't even entered her mind. "I'm playing Mrs. Darling. But — hey, don't just stand there. Go steal a chair from another table, if you can fit." She ignored the hostile glances from not a few of her companions as Isobel went off to oblige._

_The two of them had known each other since seventh grade, when six different schools had gotten together for a Regional Chorus rehearsal, and the two second sopranos in the back row had struck up a conversation during a break and commiserated over the horrible songs that their music teachers had chosen. Together, they'd composed a ridiculous parody of "One Small Step", a corny and inane song about abolishing fear and hate, that now seemed… well, what Phoebe could remember of it _still_ sounded corny and inane._

_Isobel had been as much of an outcast as Jasmine was popular, but it suited her somehow. Although she'd been sympathetic to Phoebe's romantic crises, and although Phoebe was glad to be one of her few friends, her world was far removed from anything more social or intimate than those few. Since she had been a firm believer in UFOs, corrupt government agencies… and psychic phenomena, maybe it had been just as well… and it had probably been even better that she'd moved away before the beginning of senior year._

_One way or another, they had a lot of catching up to do._

**

_Angelina was credulous, but not quite so credulous as to believe she'd somehow sensed Larry's distress in her sleep. Later, when she was able to think clearly about the whole mess, she figured that she'd been roused by the crash from down the hall and heard the rest when she came closer. The door was unlocked, but closed tightly, and the sight that confronted her when she opened it made her seriously wonder if she was still dreaming._

_She could hear another door opening, then Phoebe's sleepy voice. "What's wrong, Angel?"_

_"Nothing," Angelina whispered, not sounding or feeling very perky herself. "Go back to sleep."_

_Larry was lying on the floor near the guest-room bed, wearing only his boxer shorts, eyes open and staring at nothing. He was speaking very rapidly, almost under his breath. She strained her ears to hear for a moment, but the words were coming too fast. For a moment after that, terror froze her on the spot, waking her up completely, and she couldn't do anything at all._

_Then her head cleared again. Was he having a nightmare? Sleepwalking? (You weren't supposed to wake a sleepwalker, she vaguely remembered, although where she'd heard it or what would happen if she _did_ wake him… she hadn't the slightest clue.) Well, more like sleep-thrashing, in which case she thought it would be okay to do something. "All right," she murmured, kneeling down and hauling him up into a half-sitting position. "Whoops-a-daisy." They were both sitting on the floor now, her arms around him from behind. What now? Should she talk to him, shake him, go downstairs and fill a pitcher of cold water? Or just pinch herself until this crazy dream ended?_

_"No!" Larry shouted suddenly from where he was sprawled like a giant rag doll against her. "What — what are you — crazy?"_

_"All right," Angelina repeated. "Shhh, now. Everything's okay." The clock on the wall indicated that it was well after one in the morning, and the glow of the hall light cast a dim, surreal glow on the two of them. Actually, surreal barely described it. She remembered, randomly, when she'd been tossed into the lake one summer at Camp Argent, when she was twelve, how she'd screamed until Joanne had to be called to pick her up. Except nobody had been home — Joanne had been spending the weekend with Bob the Poetic Guy, Phoebe had been all the way across camp in the arts-and-crafts building, and Angelina had been dripping wet and encrusted with sand and terrified and _lonely_._

_Yet when Phoebe finally found out what happened, her sister's pride wouldn't let her talk about it. It was the same way now. Even when Larry began to twitch and cry out wordlessly, even when the hum of the second hand traveling around the clock made her want to scream herself, she held on tightly and kept talking to him. "Larry, can you hear me? Please, please, wake up. Everything's okay. I'm here." She realized that she was practically crooning now, talking to him as if he were her little brother — if she'd had one of those, that is. What was _wrong_ with him?_

_Finally — it seemed like an eternity, even though apparently, only twenty minutes had passed — he sagged in her arms, eyelids dropping, taking slow, even breaths, as tranquil as if he'd never freaked out at all. In the dim light, she could see tears on his face, and had no idea whose eyes had shed them. "Hey," she said, softer this time, and — she hoped — less desperate._

_Not that she expected an answer — she just wanted enough of a response so she could get him up off the floor and back into bed — but she got one anyway. "Hey."_

_What next? "Are you okay?"_

_"N-never better."_

_"What —" She swallowed. "What _was_ —"_

_The emotion that next swept over her wasn't as intense and as numbing as the terror she'd felt when she first stepped into the room; it was an astonishment spawned from disbelief instead of fear. The cool, confident, man of mystery who had appeared out of nowhere last winter and stolen her heart, who had sent her emails ending with _Forever yours_, who had never shared his feelings with anyone before her and still knew how to keep most of his secrets… he was _crying_. Not bawling like the tiny child she'd been addressing him as if he were, but squeezing tears out of the corners of each eye. Completely silent, but clearly not caring what she said or what she thought. Good thing, because, once again, she couldn't think of anything to say._

_**_

_Minutes later, wearing a Linkin Park T-shirt that Joanne's current consort had left in the laundry room, he smiled halfheartedly at Angelina from across the kitchen table._

_"You're okay now?" she asked him._

_"I'm fine. Don't fuss."_

_"I'm not _fussing_."_

"Good. Don't."

_"Are you _sure_ you're okay?"_

"That's fussing."

_"That's _concern_," Angelina corrected him. "Perhaps you've heard of it?" It didn't register for a full minute how much more amazed Larry had sounded than irritated._

_And a second after than, she found out why. "It's just that… I've had a lot of fun with you," he explained. "And… I guess what just happened wasn't a lot of fun. But you stuck around."_

We're sitting here in my kitchen and praying that nobody else in the house wakes up… and he wants to have a _relationship talk_? _ "It didn't, um, look like it was that much fun for you either. So — what happened?"_

"It was just a really bad nightmare."

_"Then how come I couldn't wake you up?"_

_"Jesus, I don't know!"_

_"Will you keep your voice down?" she hissed._

_"I'm sorry, _okay_?"_

_"So what was the nightmare about? You remember, right?" _

_"Do you remember all _your_ dreams?" Okay, _now_ he sounded irritated._

_She shook her head. "It just sounded like…"_

_"Like there was something else to it?" Larry finished for her. "Something you don't know about? Yes and no. I didn't come here to see you, Angel. I mean, I did, but I was also trying to get away."_

_"From him."_

_"Yeah." Her eyes must have widened. "Whatever you're thinking, stop thinking it," he added quickly. "If it was _anything_ like that, do you think I would have left Tanya there?"_

_"I guess not. So it was a fight."_

_He swallowed. "Yeah. A big one. Plus… he's just so weird, Angel. I guess I just got fed up with it. And people calling me the Sentinel maker's kid, or the heir apparent to this or that — it just makes it worse."_

_"Hey, I call you things, too."_

_"Yeah, but you're joking. They're not." He wasn't smiling anymore. "You're the only one who's ever really seen me for who I am. I don't want to give that up."_

_"Who says you'd have to?"_

_"You'd be surprised."_

_Angelina was silent for a long time, debated commenting on those three cryptic words, and reluctantly decided to let them go… from the time being. "All teenagers think their families are weird," she said at last._

_"Teenagers. As opposed to what you are?"_

_"Fine. All of _us_ think our families are weird. You just happen to be right. And you know what I've figured out?"_

_"No, but I bet you're going to tell me, right?"_

_She scowled at him. "That we don't just think our parents are weird, we're scared that _we're_ going to turn out to be weird as well. Like, I was trying to do everything I could not to be like my mom. And then I realized that as long as I didn't start dumping people I cared about when I thought something better was coming along, I was safe. And as long as you don't make a habit of lying to the people _you_ care about, I think you're safe, too. So please don't lie to me."_

_That nervous, helpless look was back. "Why would you think it was anything more than a nightmare?"_

_"Keep your _voice_ down!" she repeated, rising to her feet._

"Sorry. It's not a lie or a truth, it's just a question."

_Angelina sank back into the chair. "I don't know, okay? It probably comes from spending too much time with people who attach hidden meaning to _everything_."_

_"Paranoia," he suggested, looking visibly relieved._

_"I guess."_

_"I'm sorry I scared you."_

_"I'm sorry… no, I'm _not_ sorry I got on your case," she amended. "Because I had to do it. But if there's really something wrong —"_

_"You still haven't told me _exactly_ why you think anything would be."_

_"— then you'd tell me. And you will, right?"_

There was no hesitation or awkwardness in his voice now. Instead, it contained a reasonable measure of his familiar self-assurance. "Absolutely."

A/N: "One Small Step" is an actual song, created by someone other than me, and we actually had to sing it when I was in Regional Chorus, and it's actually corny and inane. :) So, what happens next? Will Isobel become involved in the fray? Will Angelina find out the truth? Does Stephen already know? Is Xavier going to make another appearance? Why am I asking _you_ all these questions? 


	26. Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Chapter 25: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The streets of Pittsfield jumped and undulated through the humid haze, and even parents whose children were hooked on summer cartoons knew better than to suggest going out to play as a suitable method of receiving fresh air. Only a scattered few braved the heat to sit on the steps of a record store that was one step away from out of business, bouncing a hacky-sack as if letting it touch the ground would cost them their lives or, worse, their unmistakable aura of Attitude.

None of them paused to look at Everett as he carried the grocery bag up the sidewalk. At first. Then one of them — the one with the curving horns growing from his spiked hair — called out, "Hey, norm!"

Ev ignored him. Any mutant who was dumb enough to hang out on the street with his posse — for there was no misinterpreting _whose_ posse it was — didn't deserve to be dignified with a reply, especially if calling someone a "norm" was the best he could come up with. But all of them — Marcus, with the horns; Jesse, who had been on the news after he had crashed an entire system of computers with a single thought; Monet, who was probably the only person in her class who flew through the air for exercise; and Jamie, whose power he actually couldn't remember ever having seen in action — thought they had a pretty good reason for their hostility toward Ev — in their words, he was trespassing on some "turf" or other. _Or because I don't look away when I pass them by. Hard to imagine how other people haven't noticed by now that by looking away, or turning around and going in the opposite direction, they're just giving those losers what they want? In any case, how can it be their turf where I live about seven giant steps away?_

In the Thomas house in particular, the ringing of the phone could just barely be heard over the roar of the air conditioner. Alicia, age twelve, was the one to answer it. A minute later, "Ev, it's for you!"

Another sign of geekdom, Everett reflected as he set the paper bag down, was sheer amazement whenever anyone actually wanted to talk to him on the phone. And when a female voice said, "Hi," his first and strongest thought was, _No, it can't be. She doesn't even know who I am. To be fair, I barely even know who _she_ is. _ Then why did he have the ridiculous feeling that he _did_ know her? To feel like he did was one thing, and it was understandable. To actually believe it was something else. "Teresa?" he asked. "You're calling all the way from Princeton?"

"I can afford it," she assured him. "How are you doing?"

"I'm okay. Are you still going to the group?"

She laughed. "Yeah. Sometimes I'm not sure why. We talked about anti-mutant rallies today. There have been a lot of them lately." Her voice grew serious. "People have died at those things. Even people who _aren't_ mutants."

Ev sighed. "I know. And I wouldn't call Bolivar Trask 'people'." That gathering, which he had glimpsed on TV two years ago, had actually been part of what spurred his interest in the mutant conflict. Someone — an actual mutant, perhaps, or just someone like himself who sided with them but took devotion to their cause way, way over the line — had planted a bomb. So he could understand his parents' overprotectiveness when they forbade him to go to _any_ protests, of any kind. Not, seeing as nothing that extreme had happened since, that he ever listened.

"I heard somewhere that he had kids, actually."

"_Inside Edge_ did a story on them a few years ago." He was about to add that he couldn't imagine what life had been like for the subjects of that article, then remembered that Teresa knew a lot less about her own father than she would have liked, and so he kept his mouth shut.

"_Inside Edge_? You?" 

Ev could practically hear her smile beneath the lilt of her voice. He scowled, even though she couldn't see him. "I was doing, um, a school project."

"Why do I not believe you?"

"Believe what you want."

"So have you talked to you-know-who at all?"

"Sort of," he admitted.

"I meant on the phone. Like we're talking now. Like normal guys talk to normal girls."

_She isn't a normal girl. Not even close._ "This is normal, too."

"Talking over the Internet when you're far apart is," she agreed. "Trying to find out personal information about your crush by chatting with her online, when you know who she is but she doesn't know who you are — that borders on stalking."

Ev ignored that particular comment. "She's not my crush."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because…." He floundered. "Because I don't get crushes."

"There's a first time for everything," Teresa said with another practically audible smile.

"Yeah, I guess." If it was a crush, though, it was his first one, and he thought there would have been something more to it.

_Something more than what? Than being completely and totally obsessed with her to the point where I wonder if she would really want to go anywhere near me if she knew who I really was? The point where I'm finding out personal information about her when she barely knows more than my name? The point where I'm in way over my head?_

Well, he wasn't in over his head yet. It wasn't like, either at meetings or afterwards, she had told him anything remarkably personal.

_But she might. Sometimes it sounds — as much as words on a screen can "sound" — like she really likes me._

Well, that was silly. The whole thing was silly. And silly was something that he definitely never considered himself to be. Something he could never have pictured himself being. Not now, not ever.

**

shy_violet: New job baby-sitting.

Krackel: Far out.

shy_violet: I guess. It's mainly watching Richie Torrance jump up and down on the giant trampoline in his backyard, playing Legos with him, reading to him, that kind of thing.

Krackel: Reading what? No Barney storybooks, I hope.

shy_violet: Frog and Toad, Where the Wild Things Are, the same stuff my mom used to read to Stephen and me.

Krackel: Stephen is… your brother?

shy_violet: Yup. 7 years older than me. He works at a radio station in New York.

Krackel: And he's the one who's engaged to Phoebe.

shy_violet: Nearly engaged.

Krackel: My bad.

shy_violet: We were actually really close growing up.

Krackel: My brother's 3 years older. He's a college dropout and he lives in Boston in a friend's basement. I'm the smart one. He and I are like Goofus and Gallant to our parents.

shy_violet: Like who?

Krackel: Didn't you ever read Highlights?

shy_violet. A long time ago OH! I remember. There were those two kids, and one was supposed to be a good role model and the other wasn't?

Krackel: Right.

shy_violet: So you're Gallant.

Krackel: Yup.

shy_violet: Like a knight?

Krackel: Yup.

shy_violet. Sir Hershey's Miniature.

Krackel: It's my favorite.

shy_violet: Mine too. So how well do you know Teresa?

Krackel: We used to hang out after school. We're good friends.

shy_violet: Just good friends?

Krackel: Ye gods yes! She's got a boyfriend.

shy_violet. Yeah. Brett. And you have a girlfriend?

Krackel: Not now. I think I'd probably want one like her, except without the paranoia that she's a mutant.

shy_violet: I think we're all a little paranoid about that.

**

_My Questions For Phoebe, To Be Asked When She Gets Back_

_1. Did you ever think of joining the FOH? Because sometimes it sounds like you know exactly what they're talking about. You were obviously scared to death of mutants._

_2. Why didn't you mention the scary things about high school? I could have taken it._

_3. You tried to comfort me when I had that bad dream. I didn't remember it until now, not really. But if you said everything was going to be okay, why did you have that look on your face?_

_4. Why didn't you try to talk your friends out of going anti-mutant? If it had been Nina, I would've banged her head against the wall until she saw sense._

_5. You think Matt Damon is sexy?_

_6. When Margali (you were right, that's a great name) said "Fear", why did you say, "Xavier"? I mean, I know you didn't like him — I didn't like him either — but still, why were you so scared of him?_

_7. So that was how you met Amanda._

"What are you writing?"

Violet looked up from her notebook. Darren had just entered the room with a box tucked under one arm. "Nothing."

Her father raised one eyebrow. "Not schoolwork. Journal?"

"Sort of." She covered it with one arm.

"Know where your mom hid the stamps? I have to send this off to Glen today." Glen was one of the script editors on _Prodigal_.

"Cabinet under the bookcase. Bottom shelf." She pointed, hiding a grin and knowing full well that he asked this question every time he had to send a package, and the stamps were always in the same place. "So what happens in this episode?" she wanted to know.

"Sean's boss elopes and leaves town, and he keeps scaring away all the substitutes. Aha! Stamps!" He picked up the box, made for the doorway, and paused. "Vi?"

"Hm?"

"Have you been hanging out with your friends at _all_ this summer?"

"Some. I have a job, Daddy."

"I know, and that's…" He paused. "That's great." As if it had suddenly occurred to him, "Know what you want for your birthday yet?"

Violet grinned. "A red Ferrari would be nice."

"Learning to drive first would be nice."

"Not wincing every time I mention it would be nice."

He considered this, then managed a smile in return. "I'm just asking you because your mother doesn't have any ideas. She's been kind of distracted lately."

Violet swallowed. "Distracted?" she repeated.

"And praying."

That, she knew about, even though she wasn't supposed to. She'd stayed up late the night before, looking for a glimpse of Phoebe on TV, and had caught a snippet of Charity's voice as she tiptoed past her parents' partly open bedroom door. The lights had been off, which was why Violet had assumed that they'd both be asleep. But they weren't.

_"Dear Lord, please watch over my children. Help my little girl become what You always meant her to be, grant her strength and wisdom, and be merciful to Stephen, no matter what happens to him or what he is…"_ Charity wasn't a maniac about going to church, and she only prayed like this when she was especially upset or worried… at least that anyone knew of. "Really?" Violet asked.

"She wants to make up for…" Darren trailed off.

"For not being there for him the first time around," Violet finished for him. _For making him feel like he had to run to Xavier, _she did not add. Just thinking the name made her shiver inexplicably. As sure as she was that everyone else in the family knew more than she did about that time in their lives, as sure as she was that she needed to find out the truth somehow, she was just as certain that right now, they had more important things to worry about. Or would say that they did. In any case, she wanted to hear the truth from someone who wouldn't be afraid to tell it.

**

shy_violet: I'm turning into my mother.

Krackel: How so?

shy_violet: Whatever other talents I have, I'm spending my summer cooking and taking care of kids. I'm a total future housewife.

Krackel: Your mom's a housewife?

shy_violet: She was for years. She teaches now, which is a step up.

Krackel: Several of them. At least her job is normal.

shy_violet: What does your mom do?

Krackel: She's a hypnotist.

shy_violet: ?!?!?!?!

Krackel: Yup. She puts on shows and everything. The Amazing Jacinta.

shy_violet: You're making that up.

Krackel: I wish. You've never heard of her?

shy_violet: I don't approve of mind control.

Krackel: Me neither. Not that I ever experienced it firsthand. She hypnotized my brother once.

shy_violet: Goofus?

Krackel: Yeah. :) But never me or my sister. So how about you?

shy_violet: Witnessed it.

Krackel: Mutant-induced?

shy_violet: You got it.

Krackel: Wow.

shy_violet: I guess.

Krackel: Scary.

shy_violet: Definitely.

Krackel: How? What happened?

shy_violet: Don't want to talk about it.

Krackel: ?

shy_violet: It's not what you think. And I've HAD the opportunity to talk about it. That's another way that I'm like her, I guess. I'm scared.

Krackel: Of what?

shy_violet: Of what other people will think, mostly. But other stuff, too. Subject change. Please?

Krackel: Someday I'm not going to agree.

shy_violet: ?????

Krackel: I want to know about you.

shy_violet: :) Is that so?

Krackel: Mutants interest me. I guess that's kind of obvious.

shy_violet: Not at all.

Krackel: Flattery will get you nowhere.

shy_violet: That wasn't flattery, that was sarcasm.

Krackel: Sarcasm will get you nowhere. What I'm trying to say is, I won't judge.

shy_violet: That's, like, the motto of people who judge other people. And everyone wants to do it.

Krackel: Cynic.

shy_violet: Not really.

Krackel: Part-time cynic. You assume the worst when you don't want to hope that it'll work out well.

shy_violet: What happened to not discussing our feelings?

Krackel: **Something** happened. I like you, Violet.

shy_violet: I have to go.

**

A/N: The little scene between Vi and her chronically vague father can serve as a segue/parallel to the opening of the next chapter. Yes, the canon characters will get brought back into the picture, chiefly Xavier and Jean. Let the bashing begin!

So, who's seen X2 yet? Like the good fangirl I am, I saw it last Friday, and posted my initial reactions in my LiveJournal, which can be linked to from my profile page. I warn you all of spoilers, and I will say this now: That. Movie. Rocked.


	27. Heart of Steel

Chapter 26: Heart of Steel

_It figured — sleep late when you need to go to school, wake up early when you have the whole day to languish. Morning had once been her favorite time of day, until she'd reached high school and lost all motivation to get out of bed, ever. Tanya munched on her bagel and tried to concentrate on the sound of the city waking up instead of the rustling of newspaper pages behind her. It was dinner two nights ago all over again, and if she'd thought that things would change once she'd finally spilled the beans, she couldn't have been more wrong. Or felt more guilty._

_Still not turning around, she cleared her throat._

_"Yes?" her father replied._

_Tanya took a deep breath. "Um, Vanessa came over yesterday to tell me what I'd missed, and she said that if I was feeling better today, she was going out to get her hair cut and shop and stuff…" She _hated_ how fast she was speaking._

_"And do you?"_

_"Uh-huh. Her mom's going to pick me up."_

_"All right, then. Be careful, and be sure to keep an eye out for…" He stopped abruptly._

_She knew the end of that sentence as well as she knew the ridiculously ugly socks he wore on weekends. It was the same instruction he'd given her and Larry ever since their grade-school years, and it had been administered first as a warning, then as a tradition — one of their few — and then almost as a family joke. And she knew that it was force of habit, but somehow it didn't seem very funny right now. It was the _opposite_ of funny._

_She stood up and spun around, her breakfast forgotten. "Don't worry. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for any dangerous mutants." _

_Dr. Trask lowered the paper. "Tanya…" he began._

_"What?"_

_"You're acting like this is my fault."_

_"_What_?" she repeated. "I wasn't acting like _anything_. I was just letting you know that I understood what you were telling me. 'Be careful, and be sure to keep an eye out for any dangerous mutants.' You've been telling both of us that, every time we went out, for years. I just thought I'd save you the trouble of finishing your sentence."_

_"You're trying to imply something. It won't work."_

_"Meaning that you don't get what I'm trying to tell you?"_

_"Meaning that I'm not going to even try to talk to you until you can look at this whole thing clearly." He looked at her for the first time, glancing at her lace-up jeans and the shirt she'd cropped a little too short. "Put something on over… that."_

_"I don't want to change."_

_"Change happens, Tanya, whether you like it or not. Put on another shirt or you don't go out."_

_This was another conversation they'd had many a time before, but she felt no consolation from the return to safer waters. Yesterday's conversation with Larry had been hard enough to deal with… and even harder to get out of her mind. A small part of her still felt humiliated at her second flood of tears in less than twenty-four hours, but at least it hadn't been in front of anyone. And anyway, she was less embarrassed than she was worried. _"I think he does want to help you," _she'd said_. "He just doesn't know how."

_The thought had occurred to her at the time — she didn't even try to deny it — but when she'd heard his sarcastic retort, she'd been forced to wonder if he hadn't had a point. What were _any_ of them going to do?_

_Two nights before, she'd wanted to let loose and cry and be comforted. Looking at the Mad Scientist now, she realized that he wouldn't mind some tears and confusion on her part, either. He wanted to be the one to tell her where they'd go from where they were now, which was exactly the reason why she was going to pretend there were no doubts or uncertainty in her mind. And hope and pray that her performance was convincing._

_She stalked off to her room to find a different shirt. Whatever got her out of the house was perfectly fine with her._

_**_

I'm sinking slowly

So hurry hold me

Your hand is all I have

To keep me hanging on

Please can you tell me

So I can finally see

Where you go when you're gone…

_"So what do you think this song is about?" Vanessa wanted to know as Mrs. Rydell drove them through town._

_"I thought you liked this song," Tanya said, puzzled._

_"I do like it. I just don't get what it's _about_."_

_"It sounds like it's about Nicky and me," Lorraine said wistfully._

_"Lori, we all know a junior asked you to the most important dance of the year. You can let it go." Tanya considered. "I think it's about this chick who lives in a really boring town and wishes she could leave…"_

_"And then she meets this guy," Vanessa added, getting into the game._

_"Why does she always have to meet this guy?"_

_"Okay, she could meet that guy." They had stopped for a red light, and she pointed out the window at a skater who was balancing on the railing of an office building._

_When they'd stopped laughing at Vanessa's dumb joke, Lorraine piped up, "Him? I'll stick with the one I've got, not some punk with pants you could fit a…" She cast a sidelong glance at Tanya. "That you could fit an entire train wreck into," she amended lamely. Vanessa rolled her eyes. "So she meets someone who never sticks around — a sort of drifter type — and she wants them to be able to escape together."_

_"Fair enough."_

_Mrs. Rydell dropped them off in front of Harriet's Hair Care, the only salon in town her daughter would trust. "You think they're going to take off too much?" Vanessa was stroking one of her own braids almost protectively, as if she were preparing for the worst._

_"I think you've been all traumatized by that one guy at the Clip'n'Crimp," Tanya informed her._

_"Hey, who's the future psychologist here, you or me? Anyway, that's one of the reasons you guys are here: to stop them from making me look like an escaped convict."_

_"It didn't look _that_ bad."_

_"And Lorraine, you have the scarf, just in case it turns out I can't go out in public?"_

_Lorraine saluted._

_"Okay, let's do it."_

_While they were waiting, Vanessa flipped disgustedly through a teen magazine, Lorraine drew pictures of evening gowns in the notebook she always carried with her. "I have money," she said, more to herself than the other two. "Do you think I should get mine done?"_

_"We've heard how you plan on having it look." _About a hundred times._ "You can do that yourself, or we can." As she spoke, Tanya studied the result samples of different colors of dye. She tried to imagine herself as "Passion's Ember" or "Ash Silk", briefly wondered why anyone would want to have hair the color of gold tinsel, and found herself staring at "Starry Night", an inky black shot with gold streaks. She adjusted the mental picture of herself to include hair of that color, skin made to look all the paler, maybe a devastating shade of red lipstick. A new look, for what was looking more and more like a new life. _

_Her fingers curled around the money in her pocket, that she'd been hoping to spend on a new pair of sandals for the summer. She walked up to the receptionist's desk before she could change her mind._

_When she looked at herself in the mirror half an hour later, she had to swallow hard to keep from protesting loudly, maybe even demanding her money back. The dramatic streaks were nowhere to be found, and the black was lusterless and made the whole package look more like yarn than hair. She swallowed again, blinking back unexpected tears._

Jesus Christ, I must have opened some kind of gate.

_"It looks fine," Vanessa cooed once they were back outside. Her own hair had come out not a centimeter shorter than she'd requested, washed and blow-dried to the pinnacle of perfection. "Very… subdued Goth."_

_"I wasn't going for subdued Goth!"_

_"Then what do were you going for?"_

_"Something different!"_

_Lorraine opened her purse. "Emergency Scarf to the rescue!" Vanessa declared._

_Tanya waved away the proffered accessory. "Thanks but no thanks. I won't be able to keep the damn thing on all the time, anyway. Can I see your mirror again?" Her friend obliged. "Hmmm. I guess it was a better choice than purple."_

_Lorraine's eyes widened. "You're not afraid of getting in trouble?"_

_"At home?" She was suddenly brought back from the safe world where people analyzed Michelle Branch lyrics and her worst problem was a dye job that didn't come out exactly the way she expected. "What makes you think he'll even notice? I mean, let's not forget who we're talking about here." She was also aware that the blood had drained from her face, matching her new hairstyle nicely… and that they'd noticed. "I guess there's only one way to find out. Hey, why don't you guys come back with me? I'll make us some lunch."_

_Remembering the casserole that they'd each sampled, both girls backed away._

_And, she realized later, it was probably just as well._

_**_

_Later, in her room, she slapped her books on her desk and resolved to get some serious studying done. But _The Odyssey_ — she had an entire chapter to read by Monday — was the last thing on her mind. When she tried to turn her thoughts over to "crafty Penelope" trying to avoid her suitors' advances, her thoughts kept turning to her hair (_It probably won't look so bad if I tied it back, and it's long enough for that now_), or the upcoming prom (_I wasn't even going to go, and would it be disrespectful now, and to who?_), or to her promise to Doug to tell him if she heard anything from Larry, or to Doug himself, who had smiled at her in the hallway last Thursday and received a dirty look from Dani Moonstar as a result. She thought about how she hadn't heard a single word about her new look since she'd returned home. (_Guess that now that one of us has come home with outlandish DNA, an outlandish hairdo isn't so earth-shattering anymore_.)_

"It seems like everything you did since you got back from the middle of nowhere was some kind of effort to annoy your crazy father."

"We weren't trying to _annoy_ him. We were trying to shock him back to reality."

"Says you."

_And then there was the little matter of the few hours she'd just spent with her girlfriends, whose problems she should have disdained, except she couldn't, because now she needed the two of them more than ever._

_And when someone knocked sharply on the door to the apartment, she almost _didn't_ think until too late about how unusual it was for someone to do that without being buzzed. Although she was the closest to the door by the time they knocked again, her father had noticed, too, and mouthed,_ Ask who it is.

_She rolled her eyes. "Who is it?"_

_"My name is Professor Charles Xavier," said a disembodied male voice from the other side of the door. "I have important business to discuss with Dr. Trask. Immediately."_

That is one _very_ immediate "immediately"_, she had time to think. She turned and whispered, "Since when?"_

_"I understand that this may seem slightly odd," Professor Xavier continued, as if he'd heard her. (But that was ridiculous, right?) "But I'm here with one of my students, and we have an offer that you might find extremely interesting."_

_Just when she thought this week couldn't get any stranger… This wasn't the first time she or Larry had been forced to play intermediary between their father and people wanting to make deals with him, but talk-show representatives and even government officials were one thing. Charles Xavier was quite another._

_From the desk situated at the far end of the living room, she could hear a heavy sigh, then, "Let them in."_

_She turned around. "Are you crazy?" she whispered, forgetting to be mad at him._

_"Probably. Don't think I haven't thought about this. Just let them in."_

_Hands trembling, she closed the door, then undid the latch._

_Although she'd never met him in person, she recognized him from that debate with Graydon Creed that had been on TV back in January — she'd watched some of it from school — and from pictures in the newspaper. The tabloids had whispered that he'd given secret instruction to mutants. Not that she believed everything she read, but what did that make the glamorous red-headed girl standing behind his wheelchair?_

_Apparently, she wasn't the only one wondering. As soon as they were inside, Professor Xavier gestured at his young companion. "Allow me to introduce Jean Grey. She's one of my prize students."_

_Jean Grey smiled, sashayed — there was no other word for it — across the living room, and extended her hand._

_Dr. Trask just stared at it. "Am I to assume that you're… a mutant?"_

_Tanya buried her face in her hands._

_"Indeed she is." Xavier appeared completely unruffled by the rudeness that had met Jean's introduction. "Although I don't expect you would have any trouble identifying mutants…"_

_If Tanya hadn't known better, she would have sworn that her father's mouth had twitched momentarily upward into what might have passed for a smile._

_"…and I understand that you don't much like the idea of having one in your house," Jean finished._

_Time seemed to stand still for a second._

_"What do you want with us?" It took Tanya a second to realize that she was the one who had spoken._

_"The same thing both of you want," Xavier said calmly. "To help Lawrence, if we can."_

_**_

_She was sitting cross-legged on the porch floor, scribbling in her notebook, her red hair almost touching the paper. The color wasn't real — the day they'd met, it had been a blondish-orange shot through with Crayola crimson. She had tried to explain how to navigate a high school that was ridiculously complicated for so small a town._

_ Larry's heart hadn't belonged to her from that moment — but it had been pretty damn close. Since then, way too much had changed, included but not necessarily limited to the way he looked at the world, his family, and — okay, okay — himself. But the way he looked at her had never changed. It was okay that she had an opinion about everything, it was okay that she hung around with witches and psychics, it was okay that she'd seen him cry. She was just… _like_ that. He'd never met anyone like Angelina before, and he didn't need to be precognitive to know that he never would again._

So how could you do anything that would risk changing that? You must be crazy.

But I also promised never to lie to her. _And they were alone together — Phoebe was going straight from work to the high school to get ready for the performance that evening. It was the perfect opportunity._

You wanted to know why I was freaking out last night._ No, better not bring last night into it. Somehow, he never imagined that the first time he woke up in her arms, it wouldn't be under those circumstances, and the look of concern on her face — the first thing he saw upon returning to the real world — might have, in fact, been part of what had brought on the tears. His memories of the dream or vision or whatever it had been were growing hazy as time passed. A room full of people, all peering closely at him. A voice speaking in a calm, controlled tone, and his own raised in protest. But even now, the feeling of doom and despair hadn't faded._

You know I came here to get away from my dad, but there's one thing you don't know: I didn't have a choice._ Better, but… he didn't want to bring that particular issue into it. (_Because it's not _about_ him anymore, if it ever was_.)_

Angel, remember when I asked you what you would do if you found out I was a mutant? _That one was probably best of all._

_He had planned it all out — had even taken a deep breath in preparation — when she cursed almost inaudibly and scratched out half of what she'd written. "What are you working on?" Larry asked._

_"My senior essay."_

_"Is that, like, a thesis paper?" he wanted to know. _

_"It's more like a reflection on our four years at school, to be read at graduation and all that. Mr. Caisson warned us that if we started with a Dr. Seuss quote or the dictionary definition of 'graduation', he'd fail us for the quarter." She clenched one hand around her pen like she was trying to break it. "He's my favorite teacher, but he can be such a control freak. I'm thinking of putting in a nice, juicy quote from _Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?_, just so see it he meant it. You know, '_With your bedroom up here_…'" She trailed off. "Come on, you don't know how that one goes?"_

_"I was always more of a Richard Scarry man," Larry said with false pomposity and humor that he definitely didn't feel. "Wait, wait. The _entire_ senior class is reading speeches at graduation?"_

_"No, no, whoever wants to write one, can, and they pick. And I have nothing to say."_

_"So why are you doing it?"_

_"Because I might get picked. You know me and making statements. But it's probably going to be my friendTrish. You know, the one with the glasses? Or Jasmine Shelley, if she even writes one. Or maybe Stephen." His surprise must have showed on his face. "What? The kid has a way with words."_

_"What would he say?"_

_"Hopefully nothing that would get him lynched after the ceremony." She shrugged. "But he might risk it. You never know."_

_"Yeah," Larry echoed, resisting the urge to laugh grimly. "You never know. Angel?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"What did you think when Phoebe started going out with him?"_

_"I was insanely happy for them. I thought at first that maybe they'd finally stop moping."_

_"But… you know what? Forget it."_

_She delivered a look like she knew very well what he'd intended to ask, but was mercifully going to let him off the hook. "You've seriously never read Dr. Seuss?" she asked instead._

_"My mom might have read him to us." And then, despite himself, "I don't remember." He had already told her that his mom had died in a car crash when he was five and that he and his sister had been raised by a short-lived chain of live-in housekeepers, but it was the kind of thing that tended to be forgotten sometimes._

_She clearly remembered now, and tried hesitantly to return to the light mood of before. "Well, if it's any consolation, you turned out fine."_

_"I _better_ have."_

_"And what's even more amazing is that you never got mad at me all the times I bitched about _my_ mother."_

_"It was a long time ago." He knew he was lapsing into "that heart-of-steel act" as she called it, and didn't much care. Her face, now raised to look at him, had begun to blur slightly, the peeling paint of the house in the background running together like a watercolor left out in the rain. _You have got to be kidding me, _he thought_,_ vaguely aware of his fingernails pressing into his palms, like the pain might keep him focused._

She just finished talking to her sister on the phone. She asked how Stephen was, how Joyce was, and then, out of nowhere, started talking a mile a minute about how she was stuck nowhere, that she should be chasing the story of the century instead of kissing up at gallery openings, that she and Michael have been dating for two years and still not a clue where the two of them are going. Her face is sour, probably remembering how easily she just broke down and praying it won't happen again. Her eyes turn to the article she still hasn't finished, then to the wastebasket, as if the last pack of cigarettes she threw out a month ago might still be in there. "This is one of the bad days," she whispers to herself with a fierceness he recognizes and loves. "Things do get better. They _will_ get better."

_The world jumped back into sharp clarity again, leaving Larry feeling slightly queasy. And she was looking at him more than slightly strangely. "You okay?"_

_He smiled at her. "Fine. You were saying?"_

_"You sure you're okay?"_

_"You're fussing again," he reminded her._

_"_Sorry_."_

_"So what _do_ you want me to be?"_

_She didn't even hesitate. "Yourself." And with a final squeeze of his hand, she picked up her pen and started writing once more._

_That was another thing — maybe the _main_ thing, he realized for the first time — that he both loved and occasionally hated about her: she had so much confidence in herself that she just assumed that it would be easy for everyone else. _But at least she thinks I _can_ be myself. And she's worried about me, even though she has enough sense — or pride — not to show it. I can relate. And how can I not tell her? I _have_ to tell her. And I will.

_Unless, of course, that was what was going to break them up, since he'd gotten a pretty clear indication that they weren't going to stay together._ _And that was making him realize, making him consider for the first time, what it would be like to lose her._

I just won't tell her _yet_.

_**_

_Xavier remained patient as he described something about super-computers, mutant brainwaves, and a school for the gifted._

_The word extinguished Dr. Trask's sole glimmering of interest like a bucket of water over an open flame. "Gifted," he repeated scornfully, rising from his seat. "You come out of nowhere, pretending you know _nothing_ about what I've worked for, and actually expect me to believe that my son is _gifted_? I'm insulted."_

_"We came here _because_ we know what you've worked for." Now there was an edge to Xavier's voice as well. "And because we know that it has been impossible for Lawrence to forget."_

_"Get out of my house."_

_"If he knows that both of you still love him despite what he is," chimed in Jean, who had sat down on the couch next to Tanya without being asked, "then it'll be easier for him to deal with."_

_"Get. Out."_

_"Do you want him to have to live with this burden?" Xavier demanded. "Or are you willing to explore other options? If he were able to control his power…"_

_That was something that had clearly never occurred to the Mad Scientist. "I would possibly be able to cope with that." He sounded as if he were forcing the words out. "As much as I hate the thought of his mixing in with other mutants." Jean had looked like she wanted to rise from her own seat as well, but thought better of it at the last second, so she only folded her arms and gave a disapproving frown. "And if it _isn't_ controllable? What then?"_

_Xavier sighed. Clearly, he had neither planned nor wanted to go down this particular road. "Then there would… perhaps… still be a way."_

_He had only just started to explain when it was Tanya's turn to leap to her feet before she even realized, much less understood, what she was doing. "_What_?" She barely heard Jean telling her to just relax and hear Xavier out. The only thing she would remember thinking as she searched for words was, _It's my fault. It's all my fault.

A/N: Hope you liked. My English teacher gave the same provisos for our senior essays, except instead of threatening to fail us if we broke them, he warned us about the snipers that would be situated outside the auditorium. I think — I _hope_ — he was kidding.

The song quote was, of course, from "All You Wanted" by Michelle Branch. Well, I think it works.


	28. Look Both Ways

Chapter 27: Look Both Ways  
  
May 29  
  
  
  
Still can't believe it.  
  
  
  
Stephen told Angelina and me at the same time. Of course, her reaction was more extreme — and that's putting it mildly — but even I was shocked, even I who wasn't nearly so close to Larry, even though I liked him well enough. Shocked, and sad for them. And angry. Mostly angry.  
  
  
  
I said all the right things to Angel. I told her that there was nothing she could have done. I told her that I knew from experience. And then I told her how. I thought it might make her feel better, but from the way she yelled at me, I think I made it worse.  
  
  
  
You interfering bastard, when will you stop haunting us?  
  
  
  
Violet was shaken. The word "haunting" was underlined three times, and the third had pressed all the way into the next page. Phoebe's writing had regressed to the desperate, scattershot tone that had marked the beginning segments of her account, and had returned with a vengeance after she and Stephen had had that mysterious fight — the fight that had driven him into the arms of another, as romance novels were so fond of saying. And here I always thought they were so perfect together. I never heard about Jubilee before. Except for Kurt, I don't know anyone he knew from that place.   
  
  
  
Although she wanted to say she knew who the interfering bastard was, realistically, it could have been anyone.  
  
  
  
She knew who she could ask, though.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
"Hello?"  
  
  
  
Violet wondered why she was so nervous. "Stevie? It's me."  
  
  
  
"Hi, baby sister."  
  
  
  
She rolled her eyes. "Hi."  
  
  
  
"Don't make that face at me."  
  
  
  
She asked him about work and about his city friends, and he asked her about her summer reading and if she'd seen Phoebe on TV the night before. "She was incredible."  
  
  
  
"You miss her, don't you?" Violet asked. She'd never been one to squeal about how romantic something was, but well, she could only hope that she was this happy with someone someday.  
  
  
  
"Yeah," Stephen was saying.  
  
  
  
"I miss her, too."  
  
  
  
"What do you think of"  
  
  
  
"The notebooks?" she finished for him, then frowned. "You knew she was sending them?"  
  
  
  
"I knew. I thought it was a good idea."  
  
  
  
She knew what she thought of them, or at least part of what she thought, even though it was hard to put into words. Moved sounded too cliché. Awed was a little extreme. Like reading a novel I couldn't put down, except it's even more amazing because it happened to someone I knew would that be disrespectful?  
  
  
  
But mostly that particular question — What did you think? — had brought forth a million other ones, more even than she'd even thought to write down. For instance, Were you ever scared of the Friends of Humanity? Did you think Phoebe was going to join them? What caused that big fight between you two? Why did you run to Jubilee? Whatever happened to Larry that made her so shocked and sad and angry? And most of all, What was it like at the Institute? You told me that you liked it there sometimes, but you never said what it was like. What did you tell Mom and Dad about the what'd-she-call'em the X-Men that you didn't tell me? She looked over her shoulder to make sure her parents were nowhere nearby, then lowered her voice and asked, "Did Xavier control Phoebe's mind?"  
  
  
  
She wasn't really surprised by the silence that greeted her words.  
  
  
  
At long last, Stephen said, "I knew there were going to be some things you wanted to know."  
  
  
  
"Well, I didn't disappoint you."  
  
  
  
"I just didn't think that would be one of them. Or not yet, at least."  
  
  
  
She was getting a little tired of this. "So was he?" she asked.  
  
  
  
"What do you think?"  
  
  
  
"I know he tried to —"  
  
  
  
"Erase her memory, yeah."  
  
  
  
Violet's hand tightened for a second around the cordless phone. How long since she'd thought of the Christmas party? Maybe not since it had taken place. It was one thing — one of many things — that they'd never talked about.  
  
  
  
My fault, she remembered thinking. It's all my fault.  
  
  
  
"Besides me — and Xavier — nobody knew about that for a long time," Stephen informed her.  
  
  
  
"Not even her sister?"  
  
  
  
"Angelina had problems of her own. Phoebe wanted to let her know what was going on almost from the beginning, but at the same time" — she could hear a sigh down the wire — "I guess maybe she didn't tell her at first because she wanted to spare her."  
  
  
  
"Like you're trying to spare me?"  
  
  
  
"For one thing, it's ancient history. And for another, I have other things to think about."  
  
  
  
She didn't need to ask what he was talking about. "Can you answer a couple more questions now?"  
  
  
  
"You don't know when to quit, do you?"  
  
  
  
She grinned with a cheer that she didn't exactly feel. "Nope."  
  
  
  
"Shoot."  
  
  
  
"Do you know what's in the diaries? Exactly what's in them?"  
  
  
  
"No. She kept them even though she knew she couldn't hide anything from me if I didn't want her to. I respected that. Still do. What's the other question?"  
  
  
  
She tried to consciously slow her heart down. "Was Xavier controlling" — Was he controlling your mind? — "anyone else?" she asked instead.  
  
  
  
"Why do you even want to know?"  
  
  
  
That, at least, was a question she could answer. "I want to know who we were dealing with." And she was pretty sure he knew why, but that was only one of the reasons she didn't clarify it.  
  
  
  
Stephen laughed, but there was little humor in it. "No, you really don't. If he was, at least while I was at the Institute, I didn't know about it" Just when she'd started to speak again, he added, "for sure. And afterward"  
  
  
  
"Afterward?" Violet prodded eagerly.  
  
  
  
"It doesn't say?"  
  
  
  
"Nothing really specific."  
  
  
  
"I'll tell you some other time, okay? Listen, Mom and Dad aren't there, are they?"  
  
  
  
"They're here," she replied. "Do you want to talk to either of —"  
  
  
  
"Not right now. I was just wondering. And no, I'm not mad at them anymore."  
  
  
  
Violet thought about mentioning that Charity was praying for him, or had admitted that she was worried for him. She thought about saying, Good, because you're being as bad as they are. She thought about what good either of those things would do, and kept silent.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
"I'm going to get a banana split," Richie Torrance announced as they neared the crosswalk. "With hot fudge sauce and whipped cream and eight zillion cherries."  
  
  
  
"That's a lot of cherries." Violet reached for his tiny hand. He took hers without hesitation, after shifting his blue stuffed hippopotamus to the other arm. "Eat that many and you'll start to leak."  
  
  
  
"No, I won't."  
  
  
  
"Yup. You'll wake up in the morning and the sheets will be all covered with cherry juice. You'll squirt cherry juice when someone squeezes you, and your mommy will bottle it and sell it to her neighbors."  
  
  
  
"That doesn't happen to people, Violet. You're crazy."  
  
  
  
"It happens to them if they eat too many cherries. Now look both ways before you cross."   
  
  
  
"Now," Richie declared.  
  
  
  
"No way," she said firmly, pointing to a pickup truck approaching too quickly for them to dash in front of it. Look, look, you're not looking! The words were as much a part of her formative years as swimming lessons and play dates. Learning to cross the street had been a comprehensive study, complete with tests, grades, and consequences. "Look now. What do you see?"  
  
  
  
Richie squinted. "Nothing over there nothing over there let's go!"  
  
  
  
"Good!" They rushed across the street. "It's so hot out, I bet the place is going to be packed. You better think about what you want."  
  
  
  
"I told you, a giant banana —"  
  
  
  
"You won't be able to finish the whole thing. How about something smaller?"  
  
  
  
"Green with black things in it," he suggested.  
  
  
  
"Sounds great."  
  
  
  
Brett was behind the counter of Lucius' Luscious Ice Cream (Definitely not the my favorite name for a place to get an ice cream cone, Violet thought) and was waiting on — she'd been right — a long line of people. Right away, she spotted Teresa sitting at one of the platter-sized tables, reading a paperback. "I'm waiting for his shift to end," she said by way of greeting.  
  
  
  
"Hi," Violet replied. "Richie, this is my friend Teresa." Her usually outgoing charge was now attempting to hide both himself and Clyde behind one leg of her jeans; like her describing Teresa as a friend, her decision not to wear shorts was one she regretted but couldn't very well do anything about now. "Can you say hello?"  
  
  
  
Teresa bent down until she was on the same level with the preschooler, her blond ponytail swinging over one shoulder. "Hi there." Rewarded with a half-second wave, she turned back to Violet. "What's up?"  
  
  
  
I wonder if someone she'd never even met told her he liked her stop it, stop it! She'd tried not to think such distracting thoughts when she was supposed to be looking after Richie. Maybe I should tell her, her inner voice managed to squeak before she violently suppressed it. "Well, you know, hanging out with this creature," she said, reaching down to tickle the little boy under the chin. He giggled and jerked away. "Reading."  
  
  
  
"Me, too." Teresa held up the book she'd brought with her — something with swords and twisting forests on the cover. "So, what else? Not seeing anyone, are you?"  
  
  
  
"Violet, make the line move faster," Richie whispered.  
  
  
  
"I can't," she told him, reminded of the small matter that this wasn't exactly the best place to tell her — although why it should be treated like some sort of shameful something, Violet wasn't exactly sure. Teresa had once asked if the guy in her "fantasies" was Louis. Blushing furiously, Violet had stopped wondering how she could have been so obvious long enough to say that they weren't fantasies, and to add that her potential partner was faceless from the time being. "Not exactly. I mean, I've talked to him, but I can't really say I've ever" Oops. "I mean, that I'm seeing him"  
  
  
  
And now Teresa really looked intrigued. "Online romance?"  
  
  
  
"Yeah. How'd you know?"  
  
  
  
"Um, next?"  
  
  
  
They'd reached the front of the line. "Two chocolate chip mint cones, please," she told Brett. She had to admit that it had taken her a while to figure out what "green with black things in it" meant. "With rainbow sprinkles?"  
  
  
  
"Yeah! And Clyde wants a super banana split!"  
  
  
  
"Clyde can share some of your cone."  
  
  
  
"But he wants a split!" Richie insisted.  
  
  
  
Sensing a tantrum, Violet said firmly, "Your mommy only gave us enough money for cones. And ice cream messes Clyde's fur up."  
  
  
  
"Split!"  
  
  
  
When Brett returned with the cones, she grabbed them hastily and slapped her money down on the counter. "Thanks. Teresa, I have to go." She handed a sullen Richie his cone, praying he wouldn't drop it on the floor. Thankfully, he didn't.  
  
  
  
"Okay," Teresa said, waving. "I'll call you tonight."  
  
  
  
When Violet got back to the Torrance house, the answering machine was beeping. She pressed the button, as Thea had instructed her to do in case it was Important. To her surprise, the voice she heard belonged to Charity: "Vi, when you get back from wherever you are, turn on the TV right away"  
  
  
  
A/N: and we have a cliffhanger. ::rubs hands together maniacally:: Please, please review. This is all that that keeps me sane. Or makes me even crazier. Take your pick.  



	29. Hurdles

Chapter 28: Hurdles

_Tanya sat curled in the chair by the window, watching the streetlights come on. She wished she could drown out the familiar sound of footsteps on the hard floor. _Pacing_ footsteps. She had a realistic idea of what it would take to break the silence if she didn't make the first move. "What are we going to do?"_

_The pacing stopped. "I don't know. Why did you burst out like that?"_

_She stood up slowly, and turned around slower. "Do you even know what he was _saying_?" she asked._

_"I heard every word."_

_It was then that discovered she _could_ be more shocked than she'd been two days before. "You're thinking of going along with it, aren't you?"_

_"I didn't say that," Dr. Trask protested, a little too quickly._

_"But you _implied_ it," she retorted, attaching as much meaning into the third word of that statement as was humanly possible._

_"We have to consider all options. And this one isn't all that horrible, once you get past all the…"_

_"Mind control?"_

_"It isn't like that."_

_"It sure sounded like it."_

_"Charles Xavier has experience dealing with mutants. He knows what's controllable and what isn't. And he knows what's possible through mental suggestion."_

_"Meaning mind control," she said triumphantly._

_"You're blowing things out of proportion. As usual." He gave that remark time to sink in, then continued. "If we were to agree to this — and I'm not saying we are — maybe it would be the best thing. Other mutants would leave him alone, and we'd all be able to return to a basically normal life. The best thing for everyone, don't you see?"_

_"Everyone except Larry. Why are you even listening to what Xavier has to say, anyway?"_

_"Desperate times call for desperate measures."_

_"Yeah, I think you've proven _that_ already."_

_Her father had stopped pacing. "I don't want to lose either one of you," he said slowly. "I _can't_. Please understand that." And he stalked out of the room._

_"You already lost him," Tanya said to the empty doorway._

**

_Stephen stared, utterly mystified, at the rows of flowers behind glass. He recognized the roses, of course, and the irises, and the tiger lilies, and tried not to star for too long at the yellow monstrosities that looked like daffodils on steroids. He could just imagine approaching Phoebe with a huge bunch of those after the show._

_"Hi!"_

_Isobel had joined him in front of the case. Or, at least, he thought it was Isobel. He could have counted on one hand the times he'd seen her without an enormous pair of sunglasses perched on her nose. Her wild mane of blond hair was now tamed into some kind of complicated silver wire clip. She looked… well… _normal_. "Hey. I didn't know you were back in town."_

_"Obviously not."_

_"How's Minnesota?"_

_"Cold. I'm here to get some plant food — sorry, I don't mean here in Wallglass, I mean _here_ here — so what's your excuse?"_

_"Getting flowers for someone."_

_Her eyebrows arched. "What do you mean 'someone'? Who is it?" He told her. "Get _out_!" she shrieked so loudly that the florist turned and frowned. "I thought she was with Reese!"_

_"She was." Stephen pretended to be very interested in inspecting the pink-tinged roses on the other side of the glass. "She's not anymore."_

_"God, she was crazy about him," Isobel recalled. "I always thought they'd be perfect for each other."_

_"Yeah." _Those might work. The whitish ones with the pink around the edges. I'll go point them out._ "She's in that play, you know, so…"_

_" She told me about that. Is she really into it?"_

_She had mostly done it in order to have something to do, but Stephen was going to let her tell Isobel that herself, if she wanted. "Are you coming tonight?" he asked, avoiding her question altogether._

_"Yeah, I guess. It'll be kind of neat to be back. So, did you guys, you know, go to the prom together?"_

_"Yup. How about you?"_

_"I went to an all-girls school," she reminded him ruefully, then lowered her voice. "And no, I didn't meet anyone there."_

_"I wasn't even going to ask."_

_"So, what was your senior prank?" was her next question._

_"Nothing major," Stephen said with false nonchalance. "We just took all the furniture in the teachers' lounge and arranged it in the gym."_

_"That's great! We all wore tinfoil hats to classes one day and interrupted teachers' lectures yelling that the aliens were coming to get us." She gave a mischievous grin. "It was my idea."_

_False nonchalance became false shock. "No!"_

_She laughed. "Stephen, you haven't changed a bit."_

_No comment. "I guess not." He decided on the whitish pinkish roses, paid for them, and waved to Isobel before making a speedy exit. She might have changed her look and learned to smile, but she sure as hell hadn't learned to keep her mouth shut. _ I always thought they'd be perfect for each other_, indeed! _What's she doing with you?_ was the question that had actually been on Isobel's mind. But it _had_ been more curiosity than insult, after all._

_And it wasn't like he had never wondered the same thing himself._

_**_

_The intermission was a greater mercy than anyone ever could have guessed. Not because he wasn't enjoying the play — he was. Phoebe's singing voice more than made up for her nervousness in even such a small role, and the whole thing might have, under different circumstances, given Larry the lift he needed. But it was impossible to relax, and Angelina noticed. "We're here to have _fun_," she whispered during Bernie's "I Got A Crow" number._

_"So was Abe Lincoln," Larry whispered back, wondering whether he was being paranoid or if Stephen was actually giving him a funny look over the gigantic bunch of foil-wrapped flowers in his lap._

_"Don't be silly," was all she said to that._

_He complied, not speaking again until the curtain dropped at the end of the first act and the applause, his included, had died down. "I'm going out in the hall for some fresh air." Angelina nodded._

_The hall was now almost as crowded as the auditorium had been, too crowded altogether for him to be very comfortable. His eventual destination was the soda machine in the cafeteria, but he hadn't even gotten out of sight of the crowd of fresh-air-seekers before he was making a valiant but entirely unsuccessful effort to keep his feet despite the fact that he was, mentally, no longer in the school at all._

They parade the streets, mechanical arms carefully maneuvering so as not to knock over any buildings accidentally; mechanical eyes scanning the crowds below for anything out of the ordinary. No one screams, no one runs. This is a routine inspection. This is only a test. Normal citizens of the town, do not be alarmed. Freaks, beware.

_And then Larry was blinking the vision away like spots after a camera flash, wishing he could stop himself from thinking about what it might mean. Sentinels, sometime soon, and he was pretty sure when, and how was it _possible_?_

Unless I had — or will have — something to do with it.

_"Hey."_

_He recognized the voice; it belonged to someone with whom he'd always gotten along but could never quite trust._

_"Are you okay?"_

_Larry didn't answer._

_"Do you want me to go get Angelina?"_

_Even with his eyes closed, he could feel the disorientation returning. He braced himself for the onset of another vision, but this didn't really feel like that, anyway. His head ached, less now that it was buried against his knees, and he was more tired than he ever could have imagined, but this _feeling_, if it could even be called that, seemed less the product of his own brain or his own imagination than the effects of _something else_ altogether. If that even made sense. It was like an invisible hand had just reached inside his head and left… ripples, like on a pond. Not something that could be seen or heard or smelled or tasted, but something that he sensed, all the same._

_No, it was more like a sense of… _invasion_. And although it didn't hurt and not a single terrifying image accompanied it, Larry waited until he felt more or less normal again before raising his head._

_Stephen was standing not six feet away, staring back at him._

_Larry scrambled to his feet. "You!"_

_"Me."_

_"You were…" Now he felt way past just a little queasy._

_"In your head? Just for a second."_

_Nausea was replaced in short order by incredulity, then by irritation, then by rage. "I'm going to kill you."_

_"No," Stephen said in that same calm voice, "you're not."_

_Larry shuddered, not wanting to think about how close he'd just come. Very smart move, threatening a telepath. _Very_ smart. "No. I guess I'm not. What do you want?"_

_"Just to talk to you."_

_"About what?"_

_"I think you know what."_

_"Why is it any of your business, anyway?" Larry demanded._

_"Because you're freaking out."_

_"I'm not freaking out."_

_Stephen raised one eyebrow. "Right. Let's walk." And he started off in an opposite direction from the crowd._

_As they rounded a corner, they nearly bumped into a short, round, dark-haired girl in a frilly tank top. She glanced at Stephen, then up at the varsity baseball player she was with (and who was about twice as tall as she was), and whispered something. Her boyfriend tightened his grip on her shoulders and scowled with open hostility._

_Stephen stared back for a second, then (to Larry's utter amazement), pressed his fingertips to his temples in mock concentration. The girl whimpered and tugged at the guy's hand, pulling him down the hall._

_When they were gone, Larry had to stop himself from gaping. "What did you do?"_

_"Nothing. They just think that I did."_

_"But why?"_

_"For fun?"_

_"I thought you hated being a mutant."_

_"I do," Stephen said simply. "I hate feeling scared and angry and guilty whenever the Friends of Humanity track down their latest target, and I hate the looks people give me, and I hate knowing what's on people's minds all the time — or knowing that I _could_ know, I guess. And I hate feeling responsible for every ungrateful punk who manifests in a place and a situation where I can do something about it. But I learned to deal with it. _All_ of it. So, precognition, huh?"_

_"I guess that's the technical name."_

_"When did you first find out?"_

_Larry sighed. "A few days ago."_

_"Have you told…" Stephen trailed off, staring from the ceiling as if he were looking for some sort of sign from above. "Oh. Right."_

_"What?"_

_"I was going to ask 'Have you told your family yet?' But then I remembered that you probably wouldn't."_

_"They know. I came here thinking I might tell Angelina, but now I'm beginning to think that's not such a good idea."_

_"I've known Angelina for a long time. If you don't tell her, and she finds out, you'll wish you'd stayed at home and taken your chances. And sooner or later, she'll find out, especially if you don't have control yet. Do you?"_

_"Not even close."_

_"Why wouldn't you tell her?"_

_"Because…" Larry shook his head. "I don't know why. It doesn't feel right."_

_"You're ashamed? That goes away."_

_His smugness was starting to get seriously annoying. "Well, what am I supposed to say, if you know everything?"_

_"I don't know everything. I've only been" — Stephen broke off, paused as if remembering something. "I've only _known_ I was a mutant for a couple of years now. I know more than a lot of others, but I don't know everything. And as for what you're supposed to say..."_

_"How'd you tell Phoebe?"_

_That far-off remembering look again. "I didn't."_

_"Then how'd she find out?"_

_"From someone else. Which made her a lot less okay with it than she would have been if she'd heard it from me. I know that now. Do you care about Angelina?"_

_"Of course," Larry said impatiently, more than a little curious to know who the "someone else" had been, but not wanting to make things any more complicated than they already were._

_"Do you trust her?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"Well, if she finds out that you kept something this important from her, then she's going to think that you don't trust her. Do you want that?"_

_"No."_

_"Then tell her," Stephen said, emphasizing each word. "Then we'll see."_

_"So what do you think I should say? I mean, how does a guy tell his girlfriend that he's not even human?"_

_There was no laughter in Stephen's eyes. "Do you want your brain fried?"_

_"Not really, no."_

_"Then you're going to stop thinking of it like that. Now." He stopped in his tracks. "And as corny as this sounds, you're not alone. And I don't just mean that you have other mutants looking after you. Got it?"_

_"I'm the first ungrateful punk, aren't I?"_

_"Oh, yeah."_

_**_

_After the show had ended, and Stephen had presented Phoebe with the flowers and she had headed off to the cast party, Larry convinced Angelina to take a walk with him outside before they had to leave. She readily agreed: it was a warm night, if not particularly starry. "I used to believe in fairies," she said without preamble as they walked across the deserted quad._

_"Hmmm?" He took her hand._

_"Totally. Phoebe got the idea that if you saw stars on a cloudy night, that was why."_

_"Phoebe has a lot of imagination." He knew that she worried about Phoebe sometimes — a lot of the time — especially now. It was something she didn't share with a whole lot of people. _ And that means she trusts me, right? And that means I can trust _her_, right? Why do I even need to ask myself that?

_"She wants to write songs. It'll do her good." They walked around to the back of the school, where the lights were half as bright as they were in the parking lot, and at some point the talk turned to the road trip they'd been planning. "We'll camp out on beaches," she was saying, "and eat in seedy little restaurants."_

_"Sounds charming," Larry said, hoping he sounded normal._

_"And we'll make up a different story about ourselves everywhere we go. Like, at one roadhouse we can be traveling circus performers, and at another, you can be a parakeet trainer and I can be your crazy sister."_

_"Where do you come up with these things?"_

_"And at another, we can be a married couple from Georgia."_

_Despite himself, despite the sinking feeling he'd been carrying around all evening, Larry found himself getting into the game. "We can be taking a road trip for our honeymoon."_

_"No, better! We can say we eloped without our parents' permission. Because my family doesn't like yours."_

_"Because we're too young."_

_"Because I'm pregnant."_

_They had almost circled the building by now, and Larry felt his mouth drop open. "You're… _what_?"_

_She laughed, reached over, and gently shut his jaw. "Could you try to stay with me here? Hypothetically. And we're going to name the baby, oh, Simon, like my dad, if it's a boy —"_

_"Why would we want to name it after him if he threw you out of the house?"_

_"They don't have to know who it's named after. _Please_ stay with me. And Melissa, I think, if it's a girl."_

_"Melissa. That's pretty." The silence was heavy between them, but it was a good kind of silence this time. "So neither of us exactly sound like we're from Georgia."_

_"What do you mean?" And she effected a ridiculous Southern accent. "Sugah, Ah don't care what they say, there ain't no one Ah'd rathah spend mah life with than you."_

_He stopped in his tracks, pulled her to him, and kissed her fiercely._

_And suddenly, a strange but powerful image popped into his head. It had to do with the comics he and Doug used to read — Superman and Batman. The secretive superhuman in love with the naïve journalist who had to be rescued on every page because she didn't have enough brains to figure out what was going on. Rescued from the train tracks, or from the vat of boiling oil, or from…the evil genius… "Angel, we need to talk."_

_"We've been…" The urgency in his word brought a definite frown to her face. "Okay. Let's talk."_

_For the rest of that day, Larry had been going over and over ways to say it, really say it, that wouldn't fall flat or cause her to lose patience before he could get the words out. Now he thought maybe he understood. Simple, direct, braced for fireworks but not openly defensive. For a change. All things considered, there wasn't a whole lot to be defensive about. And Stephen, damn him, had been right. "That dream I had last night?"_

_Clearly, she hadn't been expecting that. Or anything like that. "Yeah?" she asked hesitantly._

_He kept his distance. "It wasn't exactly a dream."_

_Or that, either. "Not a dream," Angelina repeated. "Not… a dream. So was it some kind of hallucination… or, um, a code for something?"_

_"It was more like… a premonition." The first time he'd said the word aloud. It no longer felt so much like naming an unpleasant body function, but he still didn't like the sound of it. Foolishly, he took her blank look as incomprehension. "That means…"_

_She held up a hand. "I know what it means." A short laugh. "So, what, you're trying to tell me you're psychic now?" Her tone was that of someone realizing something that she really, really did not want to realize._

_"Yes."_

_Now she sounded way more than amazed… close to frightened, in fact. "You're trying to tell me that you're a…"_

Prepared for fireworks_. "Yes," he said again, and told her everything, the whole time watching her face in the dim light. It flashed at intervals with sympathy and anger, but no fear and definitely no pity. "What I want to know," he finished, "is if it's going to change things between us."_

_"You tell me," she said frostily._

So _is_ this what's going to break us up? Is it? _"It doesn't work like that."_

_"Why?" Angelina stepped forward, then back again, placed her hands on her hips and then dropped them to her side as if she didn't know what to do with them. "Why… why didn't you tell me before?"_

_"That's what I came here to do."_

_"But when I asked you if anything was wrong, you said nothing was wrong, and…" She stopped. "I'm sorry. I'm overreacting. I'm not… not glad you told me. I mean, I am glad you told me. Are you okay?"_

_"Yeah," he lied. Lied again. What did she mean by that question, anyway? "Are you?"_

_"I think so. Just… I need some time to think."_

_Larry didn't like the sound of that._

"They did what?"

Stephen winces, but stands his ground. "You heard me. I'm sorry."

"They. Did. What?" Her eyes are blazing. That always sounded like the most dire of clichés, but it's true here.

"Angelina, I had nothing to do with it. I feel horrible about it, though. He still remembers _you_."

"That doesn't matter!"

_He swayed on his feet, almost falling, but regaining balance just in time. Angelina, although she looked like she wanted to ask if he'd seen something, remained silent for a minute. For another long stretch, they both stood motionless, staring at each other. _It didn't look like it was too far in the future. Is the "he" me? Who are "they" and what did they do? Why is it bad that I remember her? Is it more true than the other stuff I saw? Less true? How does it all fit together? I hate this. I hate this._ Whether it was some vague side-effect or just a general feeling of impending doom, he somehow recognized how important it was that he take in this glimpse of her, just in case… just in case _what_?_


	30. Tremors

Chapter 29: Tremors

Dallas: This meeting of the SEVERELY FREAKED-OUT PRO-MUTANT INTERNET ADDICTS will come to order.

Krackel: Does anyone besides me feel like they should seriously be doing something about this?

IceFemme: Hi guys.

Dallas: I'm not going to take this sitting down! Who's with me?

freakshow617: Hey Ice what's up?

IceFemme: I feel like the longer I put it off the longer I can pretend it's not happening.

Dallas: Yes Krackel we have a name, and we're going to run around in uniforms like the X-Men. Jesus H Christ.

Welcome RIDDLER

Riddler: The time has come, the freak-lover said, to talk of many things.

freakshow617: I'm going to register tomorrow. Doomsday.

IceFemme: Hey fellow mutie scum thanks for asking. I'm ok I guess.

Dallas: Dude Freakshow you can't do that! It's like letting them win!

freakshow617: I don't have a choice and neither does Ice. They're going to know what we are, and we're screwed. Now would be a really good time for you to be right about the mutants in the sewers.

**

Family meetings were never called "family meetings" anymore. Someone would bellow the names of the other three from the living room, and those other three would enter with different degrees of enthusiasm, and the battle for the upper hand would begin. Someone would, more often than not, quote what someone else had said moments before, that someone would protest that he or she didn't mean it that way, and if they let the conversation continue long enough, it would be easy to lose track of why the non-meeting meeting had been called in the first place.

In this case, Violet was perched in the basket chair watching her mother hang up the phone. She had only caught the tail end of the news broadcast on the Torrance TV, hadn't actually heard them say, "The Senate ruled today in favor of mutant registration." And she hadn't been able to catch most of what happened after that, but she was sure that Teresa — or Krackel, for that matter — would fill her in later. 

She wished she could talk to one of them.

And since she'd gotten home and seen her parents' strained faces, she had been at a complete loss as to what she was supposed to say to them. It seemed like so much of her role as the _normal_ kid in the family involved curling up silently and not saying anything.

At least now, unlike when she was nine, she could try. "Maybe he's visiting his friends."

Her parents exchanged a glance, like that was exactly what worried them.

"You know. His friends from the Xavier Institute. Maybe they all want to stick together now."

"He's avoiding us," Charity said with absolute certainty, voicing exactly what Violet had been thinking.

"I'm sure he's not," Darren said, lacking all of his wife's conviction. "Like Vi said…" and they both turned to look at her for the first time.

And she couldn't help but ask, "What's it going to be like?"

"You don't know?" Charity asked, then apparently realized how she'd sounded. "From what we can tell," she continued, more gently, "it means that mutants' names are going to be in government databases and so forth, just like he was anticipating. I think he saw this coming for a long, long time."

"I think we all did," Violet told her, but she knew without being told that two exceptions were in the room with her at that very moment. "What about mutants who don't know what they are?"

Another exchanged glance. "I think that it's only an issue if —" Darren began.

"— if their…" Charity hesitated. "If their powers are active. We don't really know all that much about this, honey."

_Why?_ Violet was tempted to ask. _Why didn't you ask Xavier all you could, instead of just asking the questions that it would to get Stevie out of the house as soon as possible? _But she didn't say that, any more than she asked, _Why didn't you even try to find out why he came back, why did you insist that the Sentinels were no big deal, why do you prefer to know as little about mutants as possible?_ And certainly not, _Don't you _care_?_ Instead, she clarified, "Yeah, of course I'm wondering what it's going to be like for them, but that wasn't really what I was asking."

"I think we'll go on the way we always have." Darren stood up, wiping his hands on his pants in an absurdly proprietary gesture. "There's nothing we can do until he calls," he added in the same kind of voice.

Even so, none of them spoke much for the rest of the evening, to each other or, until the phone rang at nine o'clock, to anyone.

Charity was the one to answer it. "Hello?" Pause. "Of course we heard." Pause. "You can say that as much as you want, we'll still…" Pause. "I don't plan on saying 'I told you so', no." Pause. "You can still have…" Pause. "Well, maybe not a normal life, but a good one." Pause. "You can't get fired because of that." Pause. "You're assuming the worst again." Pause. "I know…I know…" Incredibly, she was speaking in the low, soothing voice she'd used when Stephen had been much younger and had scraped his knees or been picked on at school. It was a voice Violet hadn't heard in a long time, and she somehow didn't think he was buying it. "Do you want to talk to your dad or…Okay. Yes." Very long pause, and it was obvious that neither of them were speaking. Then Charity held out the receiver. "Vi?"

That they'd go on the way they always had was only one of the things that scared her.

**

Krackel: Hey.

shy_violet: Hey. I can't be on long. It's late.

Krackel: I understand.

shy_violet: Have you been to the chat at all.

Krackel: I was just there.

shy_violet: How's Ice?

Krackel: Scared I think.

shy_violet: I don't blame her.

Krackel: My mom thinks it's better this way. Now mutants won't have to hide anymore.

shy_violet: They won't be ABLE to hide anymore.

Krackel: I never said I agreed with her.

shy_violet: DO you agree with her?

Krackel: No. My dad does, I think. He doesn't really have an opinion.

shy_violet: My parents actually called me at work when they saw the announcement on TV.

Krackel: Why would they do that?

shy_violet: Um

Krackel: Spill it. And if the next words on the screen are "Subject change, please", I'm going to sic my poodle on you.

shy_violet: Look, if you know so much about me you can figure it out for yourself!!!!!

Krackel: OK. One of your close friends is a mutant, right? I mean besides Ice.

shy_violet: NO. My brother is. He's known since he was 16. He can read minds. OK?!?!?!?!

Krackel: OK.

shy_violet: That's it?

Krackel: Have you talked to him yet?

shy_violet: He says he can deal with it. But he says it in a kind of scary, fatalistic way that I haven't seen him deal with anything in years. 5 years, to be exact. I remember telling him that maybe it wouldn't be so bad. He said — I'll never forget this — "No X-gene, no opinion!"

Krackel: Cute.

shy_violet: But the scarier Stephen sounds to other people, the more scared he actually is. I know that.

Krackel: What about your parents?

shy_violet: They think the world is going to end if they show how freaked they are. You know, it's funny.

Krackel: It is?

shy_violet: My family has every reason to care what mutants are going through, but your parents just ignore it. You shouldn't even be involved at all, but you feel the vibes anyway.

Krackel: Mutants get involved in our lives. Why shouldn't we care what's going on with them?

shy_violet: But it's got to be more than that.

Krackel: It's always more than that.

shy_violet: Meaning?

Krackel: I don't know. I guess I just said that to sound all profound and deep. So do you think that this is going to change what's going on between your brother and Phoebe?

shy_violet: God I haven't even thought about that! I guess this is taking a while to really sink in. I don't know. I didn't ask.

Krackel: Worried?

shy_violet: Some.

Krackel: Scared?

shy_violet: Maybe.

Krackel: You're one of the most evasive girls I've ever met.

shy_violet: This is no time to be flirting. And we haven't actually met.

Krackel: But we've known each other long enough for me to tell you that I'm here for you.

shy_violet: Thanks.

Krackel: You're talking about your feelings again.

shy_violet: No I'm not.

Krackel: Yes you are. Vi, it's OK to be scared. You love him, right?

shy_violet: Yeah.

Krackel: And this isn't going to make his life any easier.

shy_violet: His life's not over.

Krackel: I didn't say that.

shy_violet: And neither is mine.

**

Riding the subway home from work, Stephen had chanced a look at the tired, hopeful, dejected faces surrounding him. None of them, he knew, would even give him a second glance, unless he was in their way. _I wonder_, he'd thought, _if they'd feel the same way if they knew the truth_. It was a question he hadn't needed to ask himself in a long, long time. _Correction: Now that they _can_ know the truth. If they want to. Which, unless I keep a "low profile" _— he hated those two words —_ they will._

_"You can't get fired because of that."_ _What does she know, anyway?_ He knew his mom was just trying to help, but he was way, way past the point where it was a new thing to wonder what she was trying to prove by being so… _condescending_. If it wasn't for that reason outright, then some excuse would be made. He knew the way those things worked, and not just with mutants, either. _"You're assuming the worst again."_ Force of habit, he thought dryly. And the subject that hadn't been brought up — okay, one of the many subjects that hadn't been brought up: _Is being with her right now good for you?_

_Being with her any time is good for me_ was the almost automatic response. He had never lied to Phoebe in all the time they'd been together — not about his plans, not about the beautiful aspiring mathematician whom he'd met sophomore year at Purchase, not about anything. Only the unspoken reminder that they were allowing each other to see other people, however, had kept Phoebe from tearing his head off. Now, there was no way he could let on how scared he was. It wasn't some kind of macho crap that he was deciding to pull, even though logically, it didn't make a whole lot more sense. And he wouldn't be surprised if she knew his fear, but hiding it was still a survival skill.

They'd spoken the night before, of course, after his reluctant call home. He had only really talked to Phoebe long enough for expressions of comfort and loneliness (for one another; he knew that her situation was far from solitary), of how much they loved each other, and of how nothing had changed. It was what he needed to hear in the worst way.

Now, when he closed the door to the apartment behind him, the shock that he'd felt the day before was replaced by a shock that was much harder at first to recognize… yet seemed to be the confirmation of all his worst fears combined: He wasn't alone.

_Friends of Humanity who bought a clue?_ he had time to think before he flipped the light switch. _Vengeful lackeys of Magneto?_

Kurt was perched on the back of the drab but incredibly comfortable couch, looking incredibly comfortable despite the discomfort that the position would have caused anyone else. He lifted one three-fingered hand in a cheerful wave. "I hope you don't mind me popping in."

"I guess not." Stephen didn't even want to admit how nervous he'd been on the verge of becoming. "So you heard?"

"I heard," the fuzzy one acknowledged, hopping down from the back of the couch to stand upright on the floor. "Ve have… vat is it… the next veek to register, or else?"

"Yeah. How's everyone at the Institute taking it?"

"Ranging from ze grim to the hysterical, and everything in between."

"It sucks." He realized he was fuming for the first time since yesterday. He was angry at the world that kept trying to single him out. At his parents for not opening their goddamn eyes. And at himself, of course, for not truly having realized until now that both he and Phoebe would have to make choices sooner rather than later.

"That it does." Kurt made a sour face. "Amanda is on duty for the next few days. She vill not know until she gets back."

Stephen nodded sympathetically. "Have you been in touch with Kitty at all?"

A shadow of sorrow passed across Kurt's distinctive features. "Not since winter," he admitted. "I hope she and Lance are still happy together. I hope…"

_…That she doesn't regret her decision._ "Yeah," Stephen said again. "And Jubes?"

"Still avay at school. She called zis morning." Kurt shifted from one foot to the other. "I'm not staying long, _mein freund_. It's funny you should mention ze others, since zey're more or less vhy I'm here."

"You've lost me."

"I'm also, in a vay, here on Professor Xavier's behalf."

All thoughts — well, most thoughts — of the distasteful future that lay ahead of them were momentarily banished. Mention of his former mentor/nemesis (and wasn't _that_ the oldest story in the book?) tended to do that to him from time to time, which was why he'd been half dreading Violet bringing it up. "Keep talking," he said.

"Zat is not a happy 'keep talking'. Anyvay, in light of all this, the professor has called a… class reunion of sorts. Are you interested?"


	31. Hands Tied

Chapter 30: Hands Tied

_She had taken it well, and that was the thing. After the extreme reactions from everyone at home, Larry had half expected her to run into the building and call the cops, or bawl him out for not telling her in the first place. He didn't think she was too happy about that, still, but at least she had the decency to hide it._

_But when he opened his eyes the next morning, after the momentary confusion at the unfamiliar surroundings had passed, _Did I do the right thing?_ quickly turned into _What am I going to do next?

_He wasn't given a clue, of course._

_Down the hall, Angelina's door was open on what a quick glance determined was an empty room. She must already be up._

_Silently, so as not to wake and have to fact Joanne, he crept halfway downstairs._

_Angelina was curled up on the couch, a book open in her lap, although she seemed more interested in her conversation with Phoebe than she was in whatever she was reading._

_"He's a strange one," Phoebe commented._

_"Says you." Angelina set her mug down._

_"Strange in a good way. You know, comes out of nowhere and steals your un-stealable heart. And he has the whole 'dark past' thing going."_

_"Yeah, but sometimes he's so strange that I don't know what to do about it." Angelina's eyes slowly traveled upward. "I feel for him, of course, but I don't know if I can really go near this one."_

**

_It was overcast, and a good thing, too — he wasn't sure he would have been able to deal with a crowd. Not that he'd ever been great around people anyway, which was why he'd been surprised, and a little frightened, when Angelina had taken to him the way she had… and when he, in turn, had taken to her. It was obvious what he'd seen in her that day, but what had she seen in _him_? Had the attraction been purely physical, or had it been the allure of the unknown? Knowing Angelina, it was probably the latter._

_The night before, when she'd returned to her own bedroom and shut the door, he'd found himself wishing for (among other things) a touch of Stephen's mind-reading ability. After their first conversation, she hadn't given the slightest clue as to what she thought of what he was now, of what he had wondered whether he might be since he'd met her and her friends and realized that there was more to the world than what he'd been taught._

_And that was it, wasn't it? He loved and admired her for her strength and intelligence and style and sense of humor, but it was also because she knew why he tolerated the various nicknames from her and nobody else. It was because he understood — and she knew it — that whatever she might call him sometimes, to her, he was just Larry, and always would be._

_Or so he had thought._

_But suddenly it was all, "I don't know if I can really go near this one." Which was, if you wanted to look at it another way, a much more tactful version of, "You are not the enemy; your mutation is."_

No. I won't think like that. She was probably still dealing with the shock of finding out. No need to be alarmed. Freaks, beware.

_Larry shuddered. It seemed like every vision he saw was worse than the last. What next?_

But if she just needs more time to adjust — _"time to think" as she'd said_ — if that's all it is, then why did I sneak out as soon as her back was turned? Why did I run, again? Is it because something else is going to happen, and I knew it?

_Two things were absolutely certain, though: coming here, even for so short a time, might not have been a mistake, and telling her certainly hadn't been, even if it meant what he thought it meant._

_Really. It hadn't been. Honest._

Mistakes._ He thought of his sister as he'd last seen her, in tears, practically needing someone else to hold her up. And Doug, scared and confused. To take it all back… to make things return to the way they used to be…_

_And his thoughts unexpectedly turned to thoughts of home. Of playing the Great Tourist Guess-Off with his friends. Of squabbling with Tanya over whose turn it was to do the dishes, and of how she'd tossed him a butter knife from the dishwasher, picked up one of her own, shouted, "En guarde!" and the two of them had fenced their way around the living/dining room, acting about half their respective ages, while their father looked on and tried not to smile._

_So he hadn't always been fanatical and delusional, after all. And this was at the point where they didn't show him to strangers much, but everything had still been basically normal. Well, comparatively normal. Well, as normal as either of them could see._

"Tanya, why do you and your brother watch this show?"

"Because it's cool. And you get to hear people sing. And then you —"

"— vote on which one has done the best job. I'm aware."

"Hey, don't look at me, Dad. She's the one who likes watching. I mean, will you listen to that chick? Target identified — prepare to terminate."

"Not a very convincing robot imitation, Lawrence. Try sounding a little more threatening."

_It was at the point where there had been pretty much no question that he was kidding around._

_Any other time, Larry would be hard pressed to recall even one really good thing about the household he'd lived in for as long as he could remember, but now, of course, they seemed to shine out in sharp relief against the lectures against mutants and the unanswered — and, for the most part, unasked — questions. They existed in his life like they existed in anyone else's, no matter what. But were they worth surviving the rest of it?_

_He heard two pairs of approaching footsteps. Ignoring them at first, he wasn't at all surprised to see Stephen and Phoebe approaching out of the corner of his eye. "Are you stalking me?" Without waiting for an answer, "How'd you know I was here?"_

_Stephen smiled. "Do you have to ask?" At Larry's version of what Angelina called the Death Look, the smile faded. "It's where we used to hang out a lot."_

_"You and her?"_

_"And Jasmine, and Kevin, and Isobel," Phoebe spoke up. "It's a good place to think. Elementary, my dear Watson."_

_"Isobel," Larry repeated. "Aren't you and her supposed to be hanging out today?"_

_"Angelina told you, huh? We're making a detour."_

_"And I guess she told _you_ some stuff, too," Larry said bitterly._

_Phoebe's eyes narrowed for a minute, as if she were trying to think of a comeback, but then her face softened. "I'm her _sister_. She was confused. And besides" — and here a touch of ironic pride entered her voice — "if anyone's qualified to give advice on this subject…"_

_"So what'd you tell her?"_

_"That I was pretty sure you would understand if she needed time to think. And vice versa, I guess."_

_"How is she?"_

_"She's okay, I guess. She said something about joining us at Isobel's later."_

_"Great. She's avoiding me."_

_"Don't take it personally," Stephen advised._

_"Easier said than done."_

_"She needs to spend some time in a normal environment. Do you know what you're going to do next?"_

_"Do you have to ask?" Larry shot back, aware of how nasty he sounded. Turning back to face straight ahead, he sighed. "Sorry. I know what I'm going to do a few months from now, or three years, or five years. But I don't know what I'm going to do _next_. Except whatever it is, it's not going to be anywhere near here."_

_"So you're… running away." It was a statement, not a question._

_Larry stood up. "No! Trasks don't run away from their problems," he recited. "God, listen to me, quoting the Mad Scientist."_

_"Do you actually _call_ him that?" Phoebe wanted to know._

_"Not to his face." Unless his face was on a talk show, explaining how he had sought to keep the mutant plague from harming any undeserving civilians._

_"Are you going to try to fix things with you-know-who before you leave for… wherever you're leaving for?"_

_He wanted to try… and also _didn't_ want to. If it was true, and her reluctance to get involved really was temporary, then he had enough faith in her to know that she'd come to a decision on her own. And if it _wasn't_ true… well, maybe it would be better to take a preemptive strike before she could ditch him and eventually run off with that Michael guy. He didn't like that thought, but like so many other things that had recently entered his mind, there was no avoiding it. "I'm definitely not going to vanish without a trace."_

_"Good call," Stephen approved._

_"You're going to say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, aren't you?"_

_"Or something. Depends on what you have in mind. If anything."_

_"There's an anything," Larry said. His head was very light, and he prayed that it would be possible to stay in the present and not collapse for as long as it took to describe his encounter with Rogue. He could tell from the look on both faces that they'd been, alternately, expecting, dreading, and trying to ignore the involvement of the skunk-streaked girl and the mysterious school she attended. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Except there was really no need for either of them to answer. "Charles Xavier was the 'someone else', wasn't he? The only who told you" — he nodded at Phoebe — "about Stephen."_

_She nodded, then sat down on the grass. Larry hesitated, but then joined her. Stephen remained on his feet, but he and Phoebe took turns speaking. Quietly, in case anyone passing by happened to overhear, but Larry didn't miss a word._

_"It may be a way out," Stephen said at last. At an incredulous stare from the girl beside him, "Definitely not the best way. I don't know if Xavier can help you or not. It's a tricky situation."_

_"I kind of got that."_

_"Just don't do anything stupid."_

_"I can promise to try." Larry attempted a smile. "I'm only human, right?" And he was more surprised than anything else when Stephen smiled back._

**

_As they left the befuddled precog where they'd found him — staring morosely out at the water — Phoebe was still not convinced that they hadn't made a huge mistake. But what were they supposed to do, lie and say that there was nobody who could help him? He now knew some of what Rogue hadn't wanted to tell him — or, more likely, had been told not to tell._

Not the whole thing, not that he would have believed it.

_And he knew not to leave for that place without letting them know. She supposed that one of them could come along, realized what he'd probably think of _that_ idea, and filed it away anyhow._

You had a bad feeling about Xavier from the second you first met him. Call it intuition. Since when have you stopped trusting that?

_Since she had stopped letting her fear control everything she did. Just like she'd talked about in the speech she'd made at the town meeting, what seemed like centuries ago._

_Her emotions, the memories of the past year and a half, told her to run back before it was too late and… what? Say, "This is what he did to us, so you can't trust him!"?_

Yes. That's _exactly_ what you should do.

_But he wasn't Stephen, and while Phoebe had recognized Angelina's version of her own half-forgotten fight-or-flight response to the intrusion of the unknown on her life, no matter how close they were, the difference between the two of them was like… like the difference between the "mutant situation" at the time and the one that was part of their lives now. Because unknown was, in the beginning, exactly what they had been. And that, she realized, had worked to Xavier's advantage._

See? He's a manipulative hypocrite, and…

_And this was where common sense, of which she'd admittedly exercised very little in those eighteen-plus months, kicked in. _

Common sense? Come on, when she told you this morning, you thought she was putting on a show to get some attention, or playing a prank! I mean, wasn't that how it sounded, and isn't that the kind of thing she'd do, after having to put up with your angst all this time?

_Maybe once. Not anymore._

_He was a friend. He was part of their circle, for lack of better term. He loved Angelina, at least she was pretty sure he did, and hopefully would have enough common sense not to let the X-Men in on that little detail. And it wasn't like Phoebe could think of anything she would have said without repeating herself. She'd warned him in all the ways she could, tried to make him see that if something sounded too good to be true, it probably was. So even if he was confident enough — or crazy enough — to seek Xavier out, nothing _would_ happen._

_Would it?_

He was controlling Stephen's mind! _her inner voice wailed._

Was he?_ They had reached the entrance to the park by now. As they made their way toward her car, she glanced over at Stephen…and knew, somehow, that although she thought she'd been certain in the past, she would never really know the answer to that question._

_For now, she resolved to have a very, very long talk with Angelina sometime very, very soon. And in the meantime, deal with the probability that Isobel would ask "What'd I miss?" And that she would have to reply, "Everything."_

**

_When Larry got back to the house, it was empty except for Joanne. It was better that way, actually. He was much better at taking off like a creature of the night — even though it was daytime — than he would be at telling Angelina straight out what he had to do. Instead, he gathered his things together, feeling a clear sense of direction for the first time in… how long?_

_"I'm… here to get my stuff," he told Angelina's mother. "Thanks for letting me stay."_

_She nodded, for a second looking almost like she understood. "Don't you want to wait until she gets back?"_

_"I'm leaving a note," he said truthfully._

_But if his sense of direction was clear, why did that note feel so much like a goodbye?_

Dear Angel,

I promised I wouldn't go anywhere without telling you, and I'm keeping that promise. I'm glad I got to see you before whatever happens, happens. No, I don't really know what that's going to be. I don't even know if I want to know. You probably don't, either.

But I've been running away for a long, long time. And I'm sick of it.

Please don't worry about me — I'll be fine, and I'll try to get in touch with you as soon as I can. If you still want that. Just know that I've seen what my future would be like without you, and it doesn't look good. I'm not angry at you for telling Phoebe. Tell her — and Stephen — thanks for all their help.

And remember that I love you no matter what.

Forever yours,

Larry

_He made sure not to tell her, or anyone, where he was going._

**

_At the first rest stop he came to, long after he'd left his second home behind, he made sure to buy a map along with gas and a soda._

_How else was he going to find Bayville?_


	32. Them and Us

Chapter 31: Them and Us

_Dear Larry,_

Although I guess you don't remember, it was cold and cloudy that day. Strange the way those things just come to us from time to time. But I remember that it had been so clear out the night before, and overnight everything had become grayer, like to match what was going to happen to us, I guess.

_But it's sunny now. It's usually sunny where I live. California, like we always talked about — just outside San Francisco, to be exact. I loved living here for a year after high school. Came back to the East Coast for college. Moved here as soon as I could after graduation, where I'm trying to make it on my own as a secretary by day, fledgling freelance reporter by night. Don't worry, I stay away from tabloids._

_Where are you? What are you doing? Are you happy? What happened to you after we walked away from each other at the funeral?_

_And don't get me wrong. It's not like those questions have plagued me for the last few years. I've had other things to occupy my time since then. I'm not one of those nutcases who never gets over her high school boyfriend, but I can't not wonder about you. Sometimes I think about writing to you, not a rambling and confusing letter like this one, which I'm not going to send, but I would ask the same questions. Especially now, I want to know. Especially now. With everything that happened, are you glad about this whole registration thing? Or do you think that they're still being too merciful? If Xavier hadn't intervened, would I be asking you these questions in person?_

**

"So this is your room?" Teresa asked. "It's very… large."

Violet nodded. "That's what I like best about it. That and the view."

Teresa, of course, moved immediately toward the window to look out at the river. "Pretty," she commented. "So, how are you?"

"Freaked. Yourself?"

"Freaked," the other girl acknowledged with a rueful half-smile. She'd just talked to Caroline's sister, who had been in her physics class last year. Caroline had confronted her stepfather-to-be right after they'd seen the news broadcast. Apparently, neither Marcia nor their mother had even guessed that the youngest member of the family suspected Preston of being a mutant. Which he wasn't, Marcia reported, but he'd been none too happy about the accusation.

Teresa briefly considered relating this story to Violet, but since the soon-to-be-tenth-grader had specifically asked for everything to be kept confidential, decided that it wouldn't be such a good idea. She knew better than to ask her own mother for her opinion. Maeve considered herself a slight snip above the rest if not an entire cut. _Why do I even feel the need to ask?_ she asked herself. _Is this going to be how it is from now on, all of us wanting to know where everyone stands on the mutant situation before we find out anything else? No — I may as well face facts — that's not why I'd want to know at all._

So she asked the question that had always been hinted at in group, but — now that she really thought about it — never really articulated. "Vi?"

"Hmm?"

"What if _you're_ a mutant?"

Violet frowned. "Are you asking that in a 'I-can't-trust-anyone' kind of way?"

"No, no," Teresa assured her. "More like a 'Has-it-ever-occurred-to-you?' kind of way. You're, what, sixteen?"

"In August."

"Are you having a party?"

"Right," Violet said sarcastically.

"I bet I could get people to come."

"Thanks, but I don't like parties."

"Suit yourself," Teresa said with a shrug. "Anyway, I'm seventeen. That's not too old. And I think about it a lot."

"Like, what sort of powers you'd like to have?"

"Yeah, sort of. Mind if I sit?" Violet didn't. "It's not like you get to just _decide_," Teresa went on, only vaguely aware that she was sounding more animated, more excited, than she could remember sounding or even feeling in a long time. "But I think I'd like to be able to fly. You?"

"You're really creeping me out."

"Sorry."

"I'd like to be able to teleport," Violet said reluctantly. "It would be cool to be able to think yourself places, even though I'm looking forward to learning to drive." She was obviously trying to steer the conversation away from the issue at hand. "But that's not what occurred to me yesterday."

"So what occurred to you?"

Violet was still standing, and she now appeared very interested in the pictures on her bulletin board. There was one of her family, and one of her with a small, dark girl wearing a top hat and a silly smile. "It's more like, if I am one of them, my parents will freak. And my friends will look at me weird. And I'll never have known what it's like to have a choice about whether people know. I grew up in a town where the… nature… I guess… of people's differences didn't matter as much as the fact _that_ they were different. You know, them and us."

Teresa stared. "That's really profound."

"Sarcasm will get you nowhere," Violet responded, a decidedly strange look falling over her face.

"I wasn't being sarcastic. I was being serious. Seriously. You should come back to group and say something like that."

The younger girl's face darkened. "It's probably nothing they don't already know. So," she said as if something had suddenly occurred to her, "what about mutants who don't know about their powers?"

"You mean the ones who haven't manifested yet? I don't think they're really dangerous." Upon receiving a look that was once incredulous and defensive, "No, I mean, I don't think anyone would _see_ them as dangerous."

"My mom said the same thing."

"You talk to your mom about this stuff?"

"Not if she can help it," Violet said, just as wryly as the way the conversation had begun. "But what I was asking was, what about the ones whose powers are active, but they don't know it?"

"Do you know anyone like that?" Teresa asked, interested.

"No. No, it's just something I heard about."

"I don't know what would happen then." She paused. "Hey, this whole thing isn't making you…"

"Uncomfortable?" Violet finished for her. "A little."

"Okay. We'll talk about something else. Like that online romance you talked about."

"Or something else."

"Come on." Less reluctant to change the subject than she'd thought, Teresa managed put on her best teasing smile as she rolled onto her stomach on Violet's bed. _Just a typical girl-talk session_, she thought, although it was hardly that. Maybe recently, or under any other circumstances, she would have been thinking, _How can you think about your problems with the opposite sex when people's civil rights were being stolen from under their noses?_ But she had, after all, been the one to suggest it, and if she could get a sense of how Violet felt about Ev, maybe she could instill in him enough confidence to actually talk to her. "What's he like?"

Violet, on the other hand, didn't even try to hide how little she wanted to share this information. "He calls himself Krackel," she said. "He's a self-admitted geek. He says that he's from around here — I mean, he's from Massachusetts, but he goes to Cramer and he knows you." She released those last few words in one very short breath.

Teresa was a lousy actress, but she managed to switch from the quasi-provocative smile to an expression of… that word that sounded like apostrophe… epiphany, that was it. "I know who he is," she declared.

"No way."

"Yes way. I'm not friends with a lot of the Cramer kids, but I think I know who you're talking about. Do you want me to tell you?"

"Are you kidding me?"

"His name's Everett Thomas. Maybe you've seen him at Helix meetings. Skinny black kid with glasses and dreads?"

"Not anymore," Violet said vaguely. "He says he's got a crew cut that he hates." Then she snapped out of it. "I _do_ know him! He's the one who was sitting next to that kid who started singing 'Good Vibrations'. He told him to shut up."

"Right!"

"But most of the time, he doesn't say anything at all. _He's _the one who said he —" She cut herself off.

"Who said he what?"

"Who said he liked me. Or typed it, I guess."

_Way to go, Ev._ "So if I gave you the number, would you call?"

Violet paled. "I don't think so. I don't even know him."

"Sure you do."

"I'll think about it."

"So have dreams of the face behind the mask haunted you until this moment?" Teresa wanted to know, rolling over onto her back again.

"You sound like a reality TV series. Right now, all I'm feeling is relieved."

"Relieved about what?"

Violet stared at the photos for another minute plus, then answered, as if it were obvious, "Because now I know he's _real_."

Teresa thought of secret letters and unanswered questions, and realized she knew _exactly_ what her friend meant.

**

She wasn't going to talk to him. Or get in touch with him. She shouldn't.

She wanted to. What was stopping her, besides the fact that she wasn't sure she could adjust to thinking of him as a real person?

_Idiot. You can barely adjust to thinking of _yourself_ as a real person._

Violet had no idea where that thought had come from, much less what it meant.

Everett Thomas. Of all people, the aloof Helix-Ally-type-guy was her… what? Admirer? She couldn't really call him a boyfriend. Friend? Okay, that was a given. He'd said he was there for her. And she appreciated it, of course. And she'd said that she didn't know him, but of course she did, or felt like she did. _I know him enough to have told him about Stephen_, she thought with some dread and some amusement. She still couldn't _believe_ she'd done that. The first person in her "new life" she'd related the family secret to, and it was someone whose face she hadn't thought she'd ever seen. And while she knew who he was now (barring some kind of sick let's-mess-with-Violet's-head conspiracy that Teresa was also a part of), he really could have been anyone. As she let her bike coast along the side of the back road — not really riding anywhere in particular — she thought not for the first time that she'd made a mistake.

And that thought had very little, if anything, to do with her parents' rules.

Not that Teresa was really the conspiracy type. She really _was_ a friend, or the closest thing Violet had had to one since she'd lost touch with Nina. Her one failing, so far, was mainly her uncomfortable questions that made the conversation about Krackel (_Everett_, she corrected herself) a welcome relief.

_What if I'm a mutant? As if I never thought about it before, as if I haven't thought of it at least a little every few days for the last couple years… nights, mostly, when I used to have to go to my closet and take Lucy down from the high shelf._

When she thought like that now, she had to instruct herself firmly to grow up, that she was going to be an upperclassman (Upperclasswoman? Upperclassperson?) next year at the point when most girls had stopped sleeping with stuffed animals and started thinking about turning to other people for comfort at night.

Speaking of taboo thoughts…

_It's like one of those things, death accidents and nuclear war and hate crimes, that you can't even get out of bed at all if you think about too much. And some of us feel it more than others. I'm pretty sure Teresa's one of them._

_So let's say I am. Worst-case scenario, it happens sometime this summer when I'm watching Richie. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. What will I do? Will I hide it? Will I try to explain to him, even though he's too young to possibly understand? How will I tell Mom and Daddy?_ She tried to imagine coming home and sitting down to dinner and saying it right out… and couldn't. She knew how they had reacted to being told by an outsider, in a time when mutants weren't common knowledge. But now… She shuddered, wishing sort of that she had Lucy with her now. _One way or another, I'll have to register, and come fall, everyone at school will know, and they'll whisper things to each other when I walk down the halls and stay away from me like everyone stayed away from Stevie. It's only been a day and nothing major's happened yet, but how can it not get worse?_

And she could think of the obvious questions, and maybe even some of the answers, but not what she'd _feel_. Or what any of them would feel. She knew what she was feeling now, though, and that was scared. Scared for herself and her family, of course, and scared because she thought she finally understood — sort of, at least — why Charity and Darren tried so constantly to be normal parents with two normal children.

And the same question as before, as always: _What if they're offered a way out again? Knowing what they know, which I still think is a lot less than I know, would they take it?_

**

Everett checked his email compulsively. It was a habit, like nail-biting, of which he was aware but didn't think was really harmful enough to want to do something about. Once in a while, the thought _Careful, or you'll start needing to be hooked up to that modem yourself to survive_ occurred to him, and he suppressed it with an admonition that he'd been watching _The Matrix_ too much. He and his brother were both hard-core fans, and he'd long since turned Ben onto it as well.

He logged on that night in a fervent hope (as usual, and how about that?) that there would be some kind of message from Violet. _How can you think about your problems with the opposite sex when people's civil rights were being stolen from under their noses? _He was sure that's what Teresa would be asking him, if she were here, and if she wasn't urging him to throw himself at the unsuspecting girl in the first place. He knew to take it slow with Violet — she had just started to trust him. He had a feeling that not too many other people knew about that brother of hers. Or that she worried about being trapped in her mother's life, or about not knowing how to make friends. But memory was surely playing tricks if he thought it had been easy getting that much out of her.

The only message that popped up, as it happened, was from Teresa herself.

_Ev —_

_I told Vi who you were. I think maybe she was hoping for someone more along the lines of that exchange student on the soccer team. Or Louis, who doesn't even go to Cramer (but I bet he wished he did). But she didn't seem too repulsed. Can't imagine why. Kidding! I'm trying to get her to call you._

_We talked a little about the MRA, and she HAS been thinking about what it might mean. I think the whole thing is scaring her a little too much, and I don't blame her really. Anyway, I hope you're OK and you don't decide to go charging into battle without telling anyone, even if it's just your loser brother or Ben. Or little old me._

_Peace out,_

_Teresa_

He knew how pathetic it would seem if he waited for a call he wasn't even sure would come. So he resolved not to wait, just like he knew he wasn't going to "go charging into battle" yet. Not that his parents would mind — that wasn't exactly the problem. But neither decision had been the easiest he'd ever had to make.

On the sidewalk that day, there had been no sign of Marcus and the others. WE'RE WATCHING YOU MUTIES was now spray-painted on the steps where they used to sit.

**

freakshow617: What do you think is going to be the worst part of it for you?

IceFemme: I left home a couple days ago.

Krackel: I've been to ScumOfTheEarth.Com to see if there are any protests we could get involved in. There's one next weekend. In the city.

Harley333: not being able to protect my friends.

shy_violet: I second that Harley. Ice where are you now?

IceFemme: Sorry Krackel, no go. We're having a lot of people come to visit that weekend.

Harley333: vi i didn't know you had friends who were freaks.

freakshow617: Yeah, Ice, where are you hiding? Are you OK?

shy_violet: Not knowing how much of a difference you can make.

IceFemme: I can't tell you guys. Safer that way, you know?

shy_violet: I don't just mean my friends who are mutants.

**

_Dear Kitty,_

_It's been a while since I heard from you. Please email back and tell me how you're doing._

_Things have been kind of scary here. The professor doesn't know if the X-Men can keep working in their present form, if we're still safe in Bayville or if we'll have to relocate to Muir Island or Antarctica or some such place._

_In any case, he's inviting — summoning, I guess, would be the better word — everyone back to the Institute this weekend. He hasn't mentioned inviting you yet, even though we both know that he could find you if he wanted. I know you don't want to talk to him, but will you talk to me? You can call me if you want. Yeah, it's short notice, but I hope to see you there. And bring Lance, too, especially if you really want to get Xavier mad. He had better not find out I said that._

_I was on your side, you know that? Even though I stayed._

_Love,_

_Jubilee_

_P.S. Don't tell Xavier I said that, I mean. Tell Lance whatever you want. He'll probably think it's funny._

_P.P.S. Stephen will be there._

_P.P.P.S. No, I do not still have feelings for him. Don't be ridiculous._


	33. Before I Wake

Chapter 32: Before I Wake

_He'd found her on the steps of the outdoor mall, not far from the place where she'd decided that Starry Night would look pretty damn cool on her. In fact, that was one of the first things he noticed and, being his usual subtle self, commented on. "What did you do to your hair?"_

_Tanya didn't look up. "Dyed it, genius."_

_"Oh," Doug said._

_"What are you doing here?"_

_"I was on my way up there," and here he gestured at the row of stores at the top of the steps. "To try and rent a tux for next weekend. Why?"_

_"Right, right." As if, what with Lorraine's constant rhapsodizing, she could have forgotten. _Well, it's not like I haven't had plenty of things to distract me during the last couple of days.

_"Are you going to be there?" he inquired._

_"Are you kidding me?"_

_"Is that a yes, or a no?" Without warning or being invited, he sat down next to her._

_"It's a no. Nobody's asked me."_

_"So ask someone to go with you. That's how Dani and I got together." He lowered his voice. "Just like Larry said."_

_"Like he said as in _said_?"_

_"You mean, did he predict it?" He said it easily, but not before looking around them to make sure no one had stopped to listen. No one had, of course. "Yeah. That was when I first figured that he might be a mutant. I thought it had occurred to him, too."_

_She knew almost for a fact that it _had_, but also knew the kind of trouble her big mouth had gotten her into in the recent past, and so kept it shut this time._

_"He wasn't too happy," Doug went on._

_"Would you be?"_

_"If I was him, I probably wouldn't. But if I was me —"_

_Tanya couldn't resist it. "You _are_ you."_

_" — if it happened to me, I think I'd probably be cool with it."_

_"Why?" But she thought she understood. She knew through the grapevine that Doug's brother was a moderately well-known stage director, his sister a step away from starting her own law firm. He obviously thought that an active X-gene would be a distinction worthy of his parents' attention in a way that none of his comparatively mediocre accomplishments ever had managed to do. She wasn't going to voice this little theory of hers, either. _Analyzing him? God, I've been hanging out with Vanessa for way too long. And like I even care, anyway. _ And she certainly wasn't going to correct him, because…_

…because maybe it isn't the same for everyone as it is for us.

_As it was, all he did was shrug._

_"Your mom would freak," she said instead._

_"I think it was just a, what-do-you-call-it, instinctive reaction. They know Larry, they like him, and they don't want to get involved in something like this."_

_"It's like in _The Dead Zone_." She gave another cursory survey of the steps around them to make sure any potential snoopers were still out of earshot, then tried to remember the quote word for word. "'He always kissed her the same way, someday they were going to live in Washington, and no one was psychic.'"_

_"They already live in Washington," Doug pointed out._

_"You know what I mean." She sighed. "And Larry's run off to hide with his own personal Sarah Bracknell."_

_"With Angelina?"_

_Damn. "You didn't hear that."_

_"It's not like I'm going to tell anyone." He sighed. "I've been trying to figure out how I feel about this."_

_"Join the club. You mean, if you still want to hang out with him?"_

_Doug's eyes widened, and he looked more like a third-grader than ever. "Hell, no! I mean, sure I would. I guess that with high-school guys, friends aren't really important. It's more about who you're spending your Friday nights with. And I guess now that I turned into kind of a jerk since I started chasing Dani. That's one of the things I've been thinking about — how he really is my best friend, and I don't want anything to happen to him."_

_She nodded. A fair amount of high-school girls, excluding (she'd always thought and hoped, but now wasn't sure) her own trio, had the same standards, but she had a pretty good idea of what he was saying. And if something like this happened to her, she wouldn't want Vanessa to worry, so she supposed it was all okay._

_"Is he coming back?" That worried little-boy look was back._

_"I don't know." She had worried that she'd feel guilty and tense not telling him about Xavier and Jean's visit, especially after that little speech, but she felt pretty okay withholding that, at least, mostly since she still had no idea what she thought of it herself. She had woken up that morning with the violent and absurd urge to call Larry and warn him, but by the time she'd finally (and with another thrill of guilt) found Angelina's number in one of his notebooks, nobody had been home. He wasn't the type of person who was sold easily, she tried to tell herself. Maybe it would be all right. And besides — and this with a grudging and terrifying admittance that maybe precognition could come in handy — maybe he already knew. Still, she had tried because she wanted to make things right again, because… "It's all my fault."_

_"No," Doug said immediately. Then he grinned. "At least I don't think so. I mean, I wasn't there. But if it wasn't you, it would have been someone or something else." It had started to rain, a light but steady drizzle. The already-sparse crowd of shoppers was starting to thin even more. "Coming inside?"_

_"Sure, why not?" She wondered why they hadn't found a more private place to talk in the first place, then thought — with a blush that shocked her and that she hoped he didn't notice — that such a thing might not have been a good idea. If this had been a movie, or perhaps an episode of Nebula Vista, she would have started crying… oh, along about when she'd said "Join the club." And he would have put his arms around her and held her clumsily, wherever they were. She was his best friend's little sister, for God's sake; he was going out with a gorgeous, popular, but possessive girl; and both he and Tanya herself were involved in a crisis of some sort. And his sympathetic ear had run entirely counter to the whole "no one else will understand" thing._

_But all things considered, whatever thoughts she might have had, even if those things were different, were definitely — probably — _maybe_ not a good idea._

_No, they _definitely_ weren't a good idea._

**

_The black box outside the gates looked like some kind of PA system — like in fast-food restaurants, Larry thought with some amusement. Staring through the bars at the road that led up to the enormous building, he half expected to hear, "May I take your order?"_

_Instead, after almost a full minute, he heard, "Identify yourself." It was a woman's voice, low-pitched and confident. Despite the command, she sounded… well, _nice_._

I was afraid of that._ He leaned out the window. "Um, hi." _We're off to a great start already._ "I heard that you could help… you know, people like me. Mutants. Yeah. I think I have the right place, but even if I don't, I'll just leave and I won't cause any trouble." Where had that come from? _I sound like I'm begging_, he realized suddenly. _No, more than that, I sound like I'm scared. But aren't I?_ "My name's Larry Trask," he added belatedly. "I don't have anywhere else to go."_

_There was a silence so long that he thought she had left in disgust when hearing who he was. When she returned, "I can see you through the cameras."_

_What did you say to that? "Um, okay?"_

_"Where are you coming from?"_

_He almost said "Wallglass", thought about the expressions on Stephen's and Phoebe's faces when they'd told him about this place, and gave a safer, if equally truthful, answer. "D.C."_

_Another, briefer, silence. "The professor's been expecting you," the woman informed him. "There's a garage to the far left of the building. You can't miss it. Park there, then come back around to the front."_

_Larry obeyed, wishing he felt a little less nervous and a lot less like this was a bad move. A _very_ bad move. Xavier, sitting in his wheelchair at the top of an outsized flight of steps, was instantly recognizable, but the two people flanking him were not._

Wait, that's not true. That guy in the jacket was with Rogue that day, at least I think he was. So of course they were expecting me, or at least they had some idea I'd be here. And Xavier has that computer thingamajig that tracks people down. So why do I dislike him even though we haven't even met each other yet? Do I sense something that's going to happen or is it just all the warnings those two gave me? _Whatever its cause, the tension had reached its peak by the time he reached the top step, and he was sure the others sensed it, too. "Hi."_

_The African-American woman with the very long, very pale hair nodded a greeting. "Welcome." Hers was the voice that had admitted him._

_"There's nothing to be frightened of, Lawrence," Xavier said. There were no undertones to his voice, nothing suggestive; it was simply as if he were stating a fact._

_Of which Larry was in no way convinced, and wasn't afraid to show it, either. "Right. And this… what I am… it's a _gift_, isn't it? That's what everybody else seems to think."_

_Xavier raised an eyebrow. "_Everybody_ else?" When it was clear that his point had been made, he continued. "I understand that this has not been an easy thing for you to come to terms with. Ororo and Logan" — he glanced at each in turn — "and possibly every one of my students, will tell you that it never is."_

_"There are more people here?"_

_"Follow me, please." Xavier pivoted and started wheeling himself through the entryway, his two — what _were_ they, anyway? — following him. Realizing that it was either join them or be left outside with even less of an idea of what to do than before, Larry did the same. "Until recently, the Institute was a shelter for students at Bayville High with unique talents. Their academic studies were complemented by more… specialized training that allowed them to control and develop those talents, and to prepare for threats from other mutants that wanted a little more from humanity than merely acceptance." The walls of the mansion, the plush carpet, the sweeping staircase, were opulent enough to make any outsider gape, but this particular outsider was too nervous and, okay, too suspicious to even do that. "Last year, however, the level of hostility toward mutants reached a point at which I was obligated to pull my charges from their conventional high-school setting."_

_Larry had to take a couple of strides forward to catch up with the other three, and resist the urge to say impatiently, _I know all that_. That almost-familiar combination of common sense and extrasensory wariness told him that the longer he could keep his connection to his friends in Wallglass under wraps, the better off all of them would be. _ Including Angelina. I hope._ "So it's like a boarding school?"_

_"In a manner of speaking."_

_A door on the left opened, and two newcomers stepped out. The guy in the red shades, swinging his keys by one finger, was the first to speak. "Professor, Jean and I are going…" His voice slowed as he surveyed the scene. "New recruit?"_

_"Possibly."_

_"Recruit?" Larry repeated, definitely not liking the sound of the word or the tone in which it was spoken, as Xavier introduced him._

_Although Shades' eyes were hidden, the surprise on his face was plain. "Whoa. He's not…"_

_"He is," Larry said impatiently. "And no, none of us knew about it when the Sentinels were created." And he was very glad that Shades apparently had enough brains not to ask the question that he himself had been pondering since he didn't know when: _Would it have made a difference?

_"Hey, it's cool," Shades said, but he clearly thought it was more freakish and suspicious than it was "cool"._

"Storm, we can't let her get away!" Jean shouts over her shoulder as she propels herself several feet above the ground, simultaneously trying to keep herself aloft and get a telekinetic leash on the crimson-clad villainess they're chasing.

"We must restrain her before she uses her powers!" the white-haired woman calls back from somewhere further above even than Jean herself.

"Yeah, but she's probably thinking, 'I have to use my powers before they can restrain me'!" Iceman contributes.

_Xavier, who'd been saying something about control as he wheeled himself along, suddenly stopped. "Are you still with us?"_

_Larry tried to say yes, but that answer couldn't be further from the truth. He couldn't run or try to distract himself from the pain; this time, he couldn't even _move_. _Why did I come here?_ A distant thudding sounded in his ears, and his next confused thought was_ Oh God, the Sentinels are back, don't make me see any of this again_, before he realized that it was only his own heartbeat, louder and louder and faster and faster. He knew somehow that he was feeling the same rush, the same exertion, that Jean would be feeling sometime soon as she chased some less-than-cuddly mutant girl._

"I'm here to talk to Kitty," the tall, shaggy-haired guy says, staring Shades straight in the face.

"Don't bother — she doesn't want to see _you_."

"I said I came to _talk_ to her, Summers! I wasn't asking your permission!"

_The rush of anger nearly blasted Larry off his feet._

She sits by the bed, forehead creased in worry turning to disbelief turning to… what? Comprehension? Her mouth opens slightly. "I can't believe it… he would never…"

"Who would never what?" Shades asks.

Jean shakes her head rapidly. "No. No."

"_What_?" he repeats impatiently.

"It wasn't a dream, Scott," she says. "I'm a telepath, I know these things. Someone else was trying to get at your mind."

Now Scott looks twice as troubled as she does. "You're kidding me." But it's obvious that she isn't. "But if it's true, then we have to tell the professor, right?"

_The three faces were looking at him curiously. "Are you okay?" Jean asked, obviously concerned._

_Larry's eyes flicked from her to Scott, then to Xavier, whose eyes had gone very dark and very troubled, "I don't want to control it. Not if it means…" Like it would really be the best idea to finish that sentence._

The blast rocks the ground beneath him in a way that he had only seen in movies. Not that having your house planted with a bomb is an everyday occurrence, either. Who did this? Muties, it had to be. Because they didn't like what he was doing. Because they didn't like him trying to seek vengeance…

_Please try to hear me, Lawrence. The things you see can't hurt you. None of them are real._

_"But…" he choked out, shaken. "But they will be someday." Gradually, his surroundings and his heart rate returned to normal, just in time for what had just happened to register. But he didn't even have the heart to say, "Stay out."_

_Jean's pretty face had taken on a distracted, slightly troubled expression, but Xavier remained as composed as ever. "Why don't we continue this conversation in my office? I'm sure Scott and Jean have other things to do."_

_If Scott's unease matched his friend's, then it was hard to tell, what with the glasses. "Nah, don't worry about it. We were just going out for milkshakes or something."_

_"Nonetheless, I'm sure he has some questions, and I'd rather answer them in a place where we won't be interrupted by nosy students."_

**

_"I met his family," Jean said in a low voice as she and Scott faced each other across the table. She took a small sip of her strawberry-peach frozen-yogurt shake, then set it down. "It's no wonder he wanted to get away."_

_"It's just weird." Scott hadn't touched his own ice-cream soda. The Choco-Cherry Landslide, his very favorite, and starting to melt at that, but somehow he wasn't as much in the mood as he'd been when he'd ordered it._

_"Scott, remember when Lance joined us? You grumbled about it whenever his back was turned."_

_"And then I turned out to have just been paranoid about the whole thing. But that was what made him leave."_

_"What I was saying was, change makes you nervous. I knew that about you practically from the first day we met."_

_"Really?"_

_"Well, maybe not from the _first_ day," she amended. "It was after the fight between Toad and Kurt, when the professor installed the new alarm system. You kind of freaked out."_

_"No I didn't."_

_"You tried to program it to sing 'Jingle Bells' whenever there was an intruder. Passive-aggressive conflict resolution at its finest."_

_"Jeannie, what if I told you that I was going to take that Interpersonal Relations textbook of yours and blast it into the middle of next week?"_

_"Then you'd have to pay for it," she came right back. "Okay, that sounded lame. Anyway, Lawrence is a mutant in need. And that's all that should matter right now."_

_**_

_The mutant in need was sitting across from Xavier's desk, in approximately the same place where a disillusioned Phoebe Corlisle had sat over a year before, and with not a great deal more confidence in the new set of circumstances that suddenly faced him. "So if I stayed…"_

_"…then you would be home-schooled by Logan, Ororo, Hank, and myself, while also learning proficiency in controlling your gift."_

_There it was. "I don't have a gift."_

_"Of course you do," the white-haired lady — Ororo — said._

_"No," Larry contradicted her. "I have one freaky vision after another. These are things that I don't want to know about people at all. Things that I don't think even _they_ want to know about themselves. I have friends who I thought cared about me but are too scared to try to help or even come near me." He had to swallow hard at the thought. "But what I _don't_ have is any idea what'll happen to me if I go home… and I'm not sure that I want to know _that_, either."_

_"So you don't want to train here?" Logan spoke up._

_Larry thought of what his friends had told him. "No. I mean maybe… I mean… I don't know."_

_"You're confused," Xavier stated._

_"Nothing gets by you, does it?"_

_"You realize that by taking your place here, you would be near others who felt at first like they were prisoners of their own mutations. Like Scott, for instance. Or Rogue."_

_"Rogue was the one you sent to find me at first, right?"_

_Xavier nodded. "She did her best."_

_"It wasn't that I thought there was anything wrong with what she was saying." It was a lie, and he was almost positive that the old guy knew it, but he didn't think it would do any harm. And what he said next was the truth. "It's just that… then, I thought there was somewhere I belonged."_

_"And you no longer do."_

_Larry stared at his feet. "I don't know," he repeated miserably._

_"You sound like you're still in a state of extreme denial."_

_That was such a stock word that in any other situation, it might have been laughable. A talk-show word. "Not exactly."_

_"I don't mean that you've been denying what you are. You have, after all, told other people. Am I correct?" He continued without waiting for a reply. "You're in denial that what is happening to you is natural. A product of evolution. That it isn't just a flaw or a mistake, it is _part of you_. I understand why you, of all people, would want so desperately to believe that it's an error that can be rectified. And, perhaps, that that was why you came here. You miss your old life. I assume I'm correct about that as well."_

_That, he could answer, even though he wanted in the worst way for that answer to be a different one. "Yeah."_

_"And you hoped that someone here at the Institute could help you manage your power in a way…"_

That won't involve putting on Spandex and taking part in ludicrous battle simulations_, Larry thought, but didn't say it._

_"…that would allow you to return to that life. That, if possible, we could help you _suppress_ it."_

_Things couldn't have been more different than the last time he'd heard someone make that very same suggestion, using that very same word, but it provoked emotions that were eerily similar. Instinctive amazement that anyone _would_ suggest it, anger at their presumptuousness, and equal amounts of frustration and disgust with himself, because once those other reactions had passed, he had to admit that maybe they _weren't_ just being presumptuous. Maybe they were right._

_And maybe it wasn't the idea of returning to normal that had terrified and angered him so much. And it wasn't that he resented the idea of returning to normal on his father's terms, rather than on his own, of returning to his position as heir apparent. Or, rather, it _was_ that, but sitting here in this unfamiliar place, with these unfamiliar people, being asked about the life he'd been reluctantly reminiscing about before making the decision to come here in the first place… he realized how much more he had been… before. Doug's friend, Tanya's ally and tormentor, and (he had sworn, the night that he had awakened in her arms, that it would be the last time he would ever cry like that, but that promise was becoming harder and harder to keep) Angelina's true love. Well, she was his, at least. Which was why it was infinitely better that he had left without saying goodbye, because if he had waited for her, that promise not to lose his cool again would have been _impossible_ to keep._

_But if things went on the way they were, all he would be was a freak._

_So he shouldn't have been surprised, but was nonetheless, when the next question he asked was, "Can you?"_

A/N: The conversation between Doug and Tanya did indeed contain several references to _The Dead Zone_ by Stephen King. For those of you who aren't familiar with the story, it involves a guy who wakes up from a coma with the ability to see the future. Sarah is the woman he was in love with before his accident, who later married someone else. I'd forgotten how much I liked that book, and working on this story gave me a great excuse to read it again.


	34. The Space Between

Chapter 33: The Space Between  
  
  
  
Krackel: ?!?!?!?!?!?  
  
  
  
shy_violet: So serious.  
  
  
  
Krackel: You said it!  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: My mom teaches summer school along with Mr. Flanagan.  
  
  
  
Krackel: Special classes.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: Yeah.  
  
  
  
Krackel: For mutants.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: Yeah.  
  
  
  
Krackel: At Cramer.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: They're talking about it. :( I don't know whether to be enraged or glad that it's not my high school.  
  
  
  
Krackel: Yet.  
  
  
  
shy_violet: I guess.  
  
  
  
Krackel: This is segregation.  
  
  
  
shy_violet: I'm on the Scum mailing list.  
  
  
  
Krackel: Sweet.  
  
  
  
shy_violet: Great name by the way.  
  
  
  
Krackel: It's sarcastic.  
  
  
  
shy_violet: Satirical?  
  
  
  
Krackel: That. :)  
  
  
  
shy_violet: Hah, who's the genius now?  
  
  
  
Krackel: It's summer vacation, give me a break.  
  
  
  
shy_violet: Excuses excuses. I signed the petition they sent me.  
  
  
  
Krackel: And the march this weekend? Maybe I'll see you there.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: My parents won't let me.  
  
  
  
Krackel: You asked them?  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: You kidding? I don't need to.  
  
  
  
Krackel: Oh.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: It's not what you think. They were really supportive of him.  
  
  
  
Krackel: Like being a mutant was some kind of choice he had made.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: That's what they told themselves at first. So what about yours?  
  
  
  
Krackel: It's like "OK he's a genius, he'll make smart decisions."  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: Dr. Frankenstein was a genius, too.  
  
  
  
Krackel: You were going to put in another name there, right?  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: Yes, but not who you think. Anywho, if a giant green monster ever starts tearing things up in a mad rage, I'll know who to blame.  
  
  
  
Krackel: It's not like they're pushing me out the door to the protest — I mean they don't really WANT me to go — but they trust my logic.  
  
  
  
Shy_violet: Speaking of green I'm jealous.  
  
  
  
Krackel: Nice one.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
Which was funny, because he was the one who was jealous — of his friends in the chat room, of the people who were quoted on ScumOfTheEarth.Com, and even of the few people he'd glimpsed today outside City Hall — there had been maybe six of them, but it was better than none — carrying Respect All Humanity signs. Violet had informed him that some of the Helix Alliance (whom she'd inadvertently termed "The Involved" once upon a time) had done the same, and hadn't scattered right away even when a delegation of hostile Friends of Humanity had come to break up the scene. He admired her for even trying to stand with them (and was almost positive that it had been Teresa who had called her there), had made sure that _she_ knew that, then told her why he had refrained from joining in his group of pro-mutant protesters.  
  
  
  
It was conflict. It was passion. It was everything you expected in a war, which this had once almost been and now was very likely to become again. It was nothing Ev was very used to dealing with. Especially the second part. Passion — in every sense the abandonment of reason and logic, the two things that had won him the scholarship at Cramer (and here he remembered Violet's news with distaste); the things that caused his parents to trust him when the parents of his classmates, as they often bragged, didn't give a shit. The things that were going to help him become a successful computer programmer someday, if he so desired.  
  
  
  
The things that he would have to forget about if he wanted to participate in the protest that Saturday. If anyone showed up. He wanted to be there to support the downtrodden, but also because he would have no choice but to be something besides an observer.  
  
  
  
Not that he had told Violet _that_.  
  
  
  
For better or for worse, Day Two was officially over.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
"So, technically speaking, whose head are we in?" Phoebe asked, taking in the sight of the surrounding trees. The sunlight slanted through them convincingly enough to almost make her forget that she was actually in a hotel room in Chicago surrounded by smog and darkness, that her throat hurt and she was slightly tipsy and more tired than she could ever have imagined being in her entire life. Despite those and other hard, cold facts of the outside world, she snickered. "My subconscious or yours, baby?" she added in a throaty whisper.  
  
  
  
"Yours," Stephen replied. "Technically speaking, of course." As they walked, he cast the scenery an appreciative glance of his own. "It's where I used to play sometimes when I was a kid, before I moved. We'd go into the woods behind our house and build forts and throw water balloons at each other. You like?"  
  
  
  
"Very much."  
  
  
  
"I saw you on TV. You were"  
  
  
  
"Unbelievable? Amazing? Incredible?" She gave him a half smile, all she could really muster, to show she was kidding."  
  
  
  
"Those."  
  
  
  
"Thanks. I think it was one of the better performances." Everything she'd always dreamed, in fact, and nothing like she'd ever imagined. Autographs and encores, flashing lights and blistered fingers, the feeling, sometimes creepy and sometimes exhilarating but always _there_, of having such a huge crowd of people screaming for her. She glanced up at him. "Are you okay?"  
  
  
  
"No." One fist clenched, and the scenery _wavered_ was the only way to describe it, as if anger or _whatever_ Stephen was feeling was causing him to lose his grip on the illusion. _And that's all it is_, her left brain couldn't resist reminding her. _You're dreaming, and somehow he found you, it doesn't matter how, and nothing's really changed. You're still upset because he's playing with your mind without your permission, but now you're upset because it has to end._  
  
  
  
But didn't that prove, if nothing else, that _everything_ had changed? And in more ways than one, too. "Was it really that bad?"  
  
  
  
"No. That's the thing. I was expecting something like the Spanish Inquisition, and it wasn't. Close, but not horrible."  
  
  
  
She squeezed his hand.  
  
  
  
"One of the questions they asked," Stephen went on, "and they asked a lot of them one of them was whether I'd ever used my powers to hurt anyone. And I should have lied. I _really_ should have lied." His voice wasn't shaking, not yet, but it was damn close. "They acted like theyhad every _right_ to know."  
  
  
  
"So now you're registered."  
  
  
  
"Yeah. And I'm not the only one, either. They made Kurt teleport around the room a bunch of times and show them how far his range stretched. He said he felt like he was back in the circus, and not in a good way.  
  
  
  
"How are he and Amanda"  
  
  
  
"She's supposed to be back in the next day or so. I don't know how much she knows. I do know that Kurt doesn't want it to change things, but" He left the sentence unfinished. "I haven't really talked to the others yet, but I'm going to see them soon."  
  
  
  
She knew that her expression was giving away her not un-considerable suspicion at hearing those words. "See them where?"  
  
  
  
"At the Institute. Look," he continued as if sensing that she was going to say something. "I know this sounds cliché, but there's a lot of water under the bridge since the whole thing with your sister and Larry. And even if you don't like it"  
  
  
  
Phoebe cut him off. "I don't. But I can live with it. I just hate that I'm not going to be with you." The words surprised even her. Of all the emotions that their dealings with the X-Men had evoked in her, it had been ages since jealousy had been one of them. "You know what's funny? You remember that fight we had with your parents?" He grimaced. "Okay, I guess you do. We were both trying to make them see that whether you were with me right now or not wouldn't make any difference. And we were right." It just hadn't been in the way they'd thought at the time.  
  
  
  
"And you're still not worried?" Now he looked directly at her, as if bracing himself for the answer.  
  
  
  
"Of course I'm worried. Of course I _care_. And of course I don't want us plastered all over the _Star_ and _Inside Edge_, if that's how it turns out"  
  
  
  
"How comforting."   
  
  
  
_He's afraid of how I'd answer_, Phoebe thought. _That I'll say that my career means way too much to me to risk losing face. _She stopped, turned, and stared back at him. "I don't want it," she repeated. "But if it happens I've been thinking about it a lot. Time on the open road and all that. I've been thinking about that party where you stood up on the table and"  
  
  
  
"Yeah. I remember."  
  
  
  
"And about Kurt and Amanda, and how he's worked his whole life to try and fit in, and so have you. But we didn't do what Larry did do."  
  
  
  
"Run to Xavier? Both of us did _that_."  
  
  
  
"But none of us — you, me, the two of them — none of us gave up." She stared directly into his eyes, and for that moment, the mental rendezvous setting that he was so pleased with could have faded and vanished and they wouldn't have noticed. "I'm not ready to start now. I don't know if I'm going to wake up and feel like a complete _idiot_ or if you feel like one now, but I don't want to lose you." _Say yes. That you do want to get married._ _Tell him yes._ The inner voice that urged her on was now more passionate, more stubborn, and infinitely more persuasive, but she didn't obey it. This wasn't the time, and definitely not the place, to commit to anything except what they already knew they felt.  
  
  
  
Having waited long enough, he took her in his arms. They embraced uninterrupted, both realizing, not for the first time and not for the last, how exactly people could lose themselves in their own worlds, in their daydreams, without a backward glance. How tempting it would have been to stay in this half-memory, half-fantasy, and forget that they'd eventually have to wake up miles away from each other.  
  
  
  
"It's going to be okay," Phoebe whispered into his shoulder.  
  
  
  
"No, it's not."  
  
  
  
"Give my love to Kurt and Manda when you see them," Phoebe said, instead of trying to come up with an argument she didn't really believe.  
  
  
  
She woke up with tears on her cheeks.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
Her parents told her their plans for Saturday the next morning, Wednesday morning, at breakfast. And Violet's immediate, instinctive, and completely unexpected reaction was, "You're kidding."   
  
  
  
And Darren's rather predictable response (after he and his wife had exchanged an _And-so-it-begins_ glance) was, "Of course you're going. Vi, Grandma and Poppy don't get to see us very often. They expect to see you here and so does Evelyn."  
  
  
  
"She invited Marcia, too," Charity added with some distaste. She had never gotten along with her youngest sister-in-law. Even Violet acknowledged the news as a mixed blessing. She and Marcia's thirteen-year-old daughter, Melissa, had been close when they were younger, but if there was anyone on the planet more annoying than Melissa's brother Peter, Violet never wanted to meet him. He'd been a pest at the age of six; at going-on-eleven, he would be so far beyond that that it wasn't even more than amusing. The Mega-Pest. The Pest Squared. If nothing else, she'd be able to share those two names with his sister when they arrived.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
She started by sharing them, and the grim tidings, with Teresa, who said, "Ouch," sympathetically.   
  
  
  
Violet had half an hour to kill before the had to be at the Torrances', but hadn't particularly felt like sitting in the house and staring at the fat literature anthology on her dresser, so she called Teresa and asked to meet her in town. It turned out that the older girl was on her way to the first day of her new job at the Villa Value supermarket, outside which was posted the Magic Bulletin Board of Opportunity. Now they were walking there together.  
  
  
  
"I don't think it's actually going to be that bad," she admitted. "It's just that family reunions in general make me break out in hives."  
  
  
  
"Hey, maybe I could go too."  
  
  
  
"Come again?"  
  
  
  
"Well, they haven't seen you in ages, right? You could say you'd become a famous movie star in, like, Luxembourg or somewhere. And I could be your bodyguard."  
  
  
  
That sounded so much like something that Stephen or Isobel would think up that Violet had to laugh. "First of all, I'm not even sure where Luxembourg _is_. And second of all, why?"  
  
  
  
Teresa shrugged and shaded her eyes as she scanned for traffic at the crosswalk. The street that cut through the center of town was always busy, and people had the nasty habit of going very fast, yield signs or no yield signs. "To shake things up."  
  
  
  
As they crossed, Violet found herself smiling an evil smile of her own. "When Aunt Marcia says 'Oh God, look how you've grown' which she always does —"  
  
  
  
"Of course."  
  
  
  
" — then I could say, 'Yeah, I thought the government experiments had stunted my growth for good." Teresa smiled. "I don't know if shaking things up is really what I want, though." She thought briefly about explaining how her grandparents had always been demanding, and how each get-together (which had blessedly become less frequent after they'd moved down-south) between Darren, Evelyn, and Marcia had become increasingly competitive, but decided against it. _Because you don't want to start babbling, or because it might lead to my slipping up and talking about the things we're guaranteed to be fine as long as we _don't_ tell them?_  
  
  
  
"God, I wish I didn't have to walk to work. Brett's parents bought him his car on his sixteenth birthday, but my mom makes a face every time I hint at it. You know how she is."  
  
  
  
"Um, kind of. My parents are the same way." She had never been to Teresa's house or met the infamous Maeve, but had heard more than one story about her at Helix meetings. _Which reminds me. Note to self: ask her when the next one of those is._  
  
  
  
Much later, while she was reading _The Mysterious Tadpole_ to Richie, she heard the sirens. An ambulance, she thought, although she wasn't sure. Her charge, delighted, interrupted the story with siren noises of his own until Violet, overcome with an inexplicable case of chills, told him that she wouldn't finish it if he wasn't quiet _now_. She couldn't remember ever sounding like that in all her life.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
  
_But you DIDN'T stay, Jubes, and that's the point. You're at the Institute during holidays, and the rest of the time you're at college learning to be a famous chef, right? Only those of us who left know, even if we don't want to know that we know, just how risky this class reunion is._  
  
  
  
_Lance doesn't want to go. He says that I left the X-Men behind forever when he left the Brotherhood behind forever, and that we deserved to live far away from both of them as a happy, liberated mutant couple. Well, I guess not so liberated now, and if things continue the way they are here, not very happy, either._  
  
  
  
_HE wants to stay away. I want to be there. I'll probably regret it later, but I do want to be there._  
  
  
  
_Love,_  
  
_Kitty_  



	35. It Comes To This

Chapter 34: It Comes To This  
  
_"Does he understand what he's asking?" Ororo asked. They had asked their new arrival to leave temporarily, pointing him toward what most of the students called the Uncommon Room and where some of them were almost certainly gathered now.  
  
"I'm afraid that he's already made up his mind," Xavier told her.  
  
"I don't think that's what she was asking," said Logan. "She wants to know if he knows what it means." He acknowledged the appreciative glance from the weather witch with a gruff nod of his own, then frowned. "So what _does_ it mean?" Ororo smiled. "I'm serious, Charles. The kid wants to be normal again, so why didn't you tell him that that ain't the way it works?"  
  
"Because I wasn't certain." The other two stared. "I would have to get a second opinion from Hank, or perhaps Moira if it came to that. But I've also allowed myself some insight into Lawrence's experiences and the nature of his gift. It's obviously psionic in nature, and, as far as I can see, the premonitions are linked to physical proximity or emotional connections to the people whose futures he is 'seeing'. Are both of you with me so far?" They were. "And if they are projected from the subconscious to his conscious mind"  
  
Ororo could count on one hand the times that she had actually interrupted the professor like this, but she couldn't resist. "Are you saying that you could"  
  
"use my own abilities to permanently block the signal? I'm saying it's _possible_. It is not, however, my first choice."  
  
"It isn't mine, either," she said firmly. "We're here to help mutants deal with their powers, not teach the lesson that they'll be happier if they're re-assimilated. What would the younger students think?"  
  
"They would never have to know. And I agree with you, more than I think you realize. But he's obviously upset by what he sees, and" Xavier sighed. "Perhaps, if it can be done, it would be the best thing for all of us. Including his family, to whom I already made this suggestion."  
  
"Charles" Unable to believe what she was hearing, Ororo could feel her voice beginning to rise. She saw Logan cock his head, interested again now that conflict had electrified the atmosphere, and she didn't much care. "You're thinking of going through with something because Bolivar Trask thinks it's a good idea?"  
  
"She's got a point," Logan drawled. "If you think you should be doing that wacko any favors, you're as crazy as he is."  
  
Xavier clearly didn't like being called crazy, but was even more clearly trying not to show it. "What Lawrence wants, more than anything, is to return to a normal life. The fact that his family wants the same thing merely makes the transition smoother, and the chances that they'll keep quiet better. That's all I'm saying. And the fact that none of _us_ want it shouldn't stop us from doing what's best for him."  
  
"So what are you gonna tell him?"  
  
"Nothing, until I'm sure." And even then, he did not add, not everything.  
  
**  
  
It had been threatening to rain all morning, and when the first drops fell, they didn't develop into a dramatic thunderstorm but into an insolent drizzle. Nothing exciting, but enough to keep almost everyone inside. Rogue read three or four paragraphs in her history text, gave up, tossed the book aside, and picked up the Elizabeth Hand thriller she'd picked up last week during one of her infrequent trips to the mall.  
  
"Nice place."  
  
Rogue looked up from her book and was only slightly surprised to see the boy she hadn't managed to recruit standing in the doorway. Oh. It's you.  
  
I guess.  
  
Are you staying?  
  
He made a face. I don't know.  
  
Rogue, do you two know each other? Jamie cut in.  
  
Sort of, she told him, editing out with great difficulty, and knowing that by the end of the day the Institute would be rife with gossip about the Goth chick and the new boy.  
  
Okay, I'm not gonna bother you. And he returned with a dramatic sigh to his worksheet of math problems.  
  
Lawrence (that was his name, right?) was still standing there awkwardly, so she figured the least she could do was offer him a chair, which she did. He remained standing. So how long have you been here? I mean, when did you first, you know, manifest?  
  
His bluntness didn't completely throw Rogue off, but it did startle her slightly. She had to concede, though, that if he'd wanted permission to ask any of that, she probably would have said no. Which question do you want answered?  
  
The second one.  
  
Last year, she said reluctantly.  
  
But you can control it now, right?  
  
_Why is he asking me this? We weren't exactly warm and fuzzy toward each other the last time we talked. And speaking of fuzzy, why isn't Kurt dealing with this_? _He's maybe five thousand times better at these kinds of things than I am._  
  
The least she could do would be to answer the question, no matter how much she still hated explaining it. She didn't know what was worse – the ones who took a step back or the ones who felt sorry for her. Not even close. She prayed that his next question wouldn't be, _What is it that you can do?_  
  
It wasn't. What he did ask was somehow worse. How did you live with it?  
  
Rogue had to think on that one. It wasn't the first time that question had been posed to her, either – just the first time she'd been even remotely compelled to answer. . "The same way Scooter lives with holding back his eye-lasers behind his shades all the time, or Rahne lives with being furry some of the time, or Kurt and Hank all the time. The ones like us, and Jamie over there – she gestured at the round-faced thirteen-year-old, who looked up at the sound of his name, causing her to lower her voice again – have to learn to adapt...   
  
But what if you don't want to adapt? Like -- he looked at the floor, at the chair she'd indicated, at her, and then back at the floor again -- don't you ever just want to stop being a mutant?  
  
And she thought she understood all of a sudden. Maybe. She wasn't sure if it was his upbringing or just sheer stubbornness -- or possibly both -- but she'd be very surprised if he didn't think somehow that to accept himself as a mutant would be to condemn himself to being an outcast forever. Which actually wasn't so far off, but... "Lawrence"  
  
"Larry," he interrupted, making a face. "Please."  
  
"Whatever. I'm not going to try to tell you all the good you could do if you _did_ learn to control these visions of yours, because I bet you've heard it all before."  
  
"Right. Larry the Magnificent sees all, knows all, tells all." He laughed humorlessly.  
  
"Something along those lines, yeah."  
  
"Isn't the big thing about seeing the future not being able to change it?" Larry asked, genuinely curious, as if she might know something about the rules.  
  
She was all set to tell him she didn't, but five years of living with the uncannily perceptive Irene Adler argued otherwise, and all too persuasively. "I only know for sure what I've read in annoying books." And that really _was_ the truth, wasn't it? So was that if someone had told _her_ all of this sometime between when she'd run away from Jackson and when she'd ended up with the Brotherhood, she would have spent a lot less time angsting about how she could never get close to anyone. As it was, maybe she could knock some sense into the kid. My point is, duh, sometimes I wish I wasn't a mutant. Much less running with this crazy crowd. But -- and I know this is gonna sound like something that Xavier would say -- but trying to change what I am didn't help me. And once we stop trying to do that, even if we can never control our powers, at least we can keep them from controlling _us_. You got it? She took a breath and a moment to marvel at her own spiel, then watched Larry closely to see if it had sunk in.  
  
He was considering it, that was for sure. When he did open his mouth again, it was to say, That _is_ something Xavier said._ _Does he put words in all of your mouths like this?  
  
Rogue didn't quite shudder.  
  
And isn't staying here just another kind of hiding?  
  
True. I bet he made it seem like it's the only choice that you have. It's not. But you can't just keep wandering around not knowing what to do to yourself. He looked like he was actually considering this. Got it? she repeated, but by now he had gone into another trance. "Um, Larry?" She waved a hand in front of his face  
  
and he screamed. _Howled_, really, like someone had set him on fire.   
  
For the _next_ insane second, Rogue actually considered removing one of her gloves and making the cruical contact. A matter of minutes ago, she'd been wondering why she was even bothering to hear him out. Now she planned to make his personality one of the many that were still floating around inside her own head? Sheer madness. But he needed help. That much she was sure of. What he was seeing was a complete mystery to her, but she didn't even consider the possibility that it was a disaster that could be averted if she took the brunt of the vision herself. Nobody, not even the denial-ridden offspring of genocidal fanatics, deserved what was happening to him now, and that was that.  
  
"Beautiful and terrible" he whispered in a dazed voice. "Both at once. If anything was ever both at once"  
  
"Larry, snap out of it!"  
  
He clearly had no intention of doing so. "She'll rise and she'll be something else. Something so much _else_ something _other_. Beautiful and terrible."  
  
I'm going to get Professor Xavier, Jamie announced, eyes wide.  
  
Before he could do so, and before she could do anything more than shed her left glove and take several steps forward, Larry dropped to the ground so suddenly that Rogue had to blink before she could believe what she was seeing. Her skin prickled as she realized that someone — namely, Jean, with Scott at her side — had come up behind her and had been standing there for... how long? "I'm telling Kurt to come out here and teleport him to the infirmary," the redhead announced. "I wish it didn't have to come to this."_  
  
_   
  
_**  
  
  
  
_Stephen wasn't the only one who had noticed the changes in Isobel. Rather than debates over whether a mysterious connection existed between the morning announcements at the high school and the secret sauce at McDonalds, the conversation topics seemed mainly to be affirmations of what _hadn't_ changed and explanations of what _had_. Who was going out with whom, which teachers were still being creepy, and what everyone's plans for next year were. Had it just been Angelina's imagination, or had Isobel's laughter seemed a little too rehearsed and her questions just a little too much like personalized small talk?  
  
_Maybe I _was_ just being judgmental. Letting the severe strangeness of last night detach me from what's normal, even though normal was something we could all have done with.  
  
_One way or another, she had suddenly been able to think of a thousand — no, a million — places she'd rather be than sitting in this unfamiliar living room talking to her former classmate. Just as she hadn't denied from the moment she'd arrived here that she was going to do her best to keep things "normal" (_why?_), there had eventually ceased to be the slightest doubt that she wasn't the only one.  
  
As if she'd experienced a psychic flash of her own, she had suddenly realized that she had to get out of there, had to fix things with him (_how?_) and fast. And she hadn't been home ten minutes before she was calling a number that used to fill her with joyful anticipation every time she punched it in, but now caused the sad, empty, unreal, and most of all _lonely_ feeling she'd woken up with to return, stronger than ever.  
  
"Yes?" said a brusque voice that Angelina had only heard once before, and then from the TV set, but that she had no trouble identifying.  
  
"Is Larry there?" she inquired, holding the phone in one hand and his note in the other, as if a sixth reading might give her some kind of clue as to where he'd gone, what he was planning to do next. Out of reluctantly developed habit, she thought to add, "Please," then stopped. _What did you say to make him run like that, you psycho-wank? What did you tell him? This is all your fault, isn't it? How could it not be?  
_  
"No. No, he isn't. You're that girlfriend of his, aren't you?" A female voice piped up in the background. "What do you mean?" The voice spoke again. "All right."  
  
There was a rustling noise as the phone on the other end changed hands. Then, "Angelina?"  
  
"Speaking. Is this Tanya?"  
  
"Uh-huh. He's not with you? I was sure"  
  
"He was."  
  
"You mean he left?"  
  
"Yeah. While I was out."  
  
"Um did he" — Tanya lowered her voice significantly — "tell you?"  
  
"Did he tell me oh." She closed her eyes. "Yeah." Did she think that what she'd said had been part of what had made him leave? She shouldn't just assume it, but she couldn't stop wondering. "Please, _please_ have him call me if he comes home. I'm really worried about him."  
  
"Yeah. So are we."  
  
" 'We'?" Angelina echoed, surprised.  
  
A much longer pause. "I think so. No, I'm pretty sure so.  
  
Angelina skimmed the note again. _I've seen what my future would be like without you, and it doesn't look good. _ she said under her breath, then aloud, trying not to let on that tears had sprung into her eyes, Why do I have the feeling that's not a good thing?   
_  
**  
  
_Larry hunted in his backpack for his key to the apartment, wondered briefly if his father had changed the locks in his absence, then wondered why he had wondered it.   
  
_(where am I coming from where am I headed where am I now who am I)  
_  
"Aaaah!" The dizzy spell had caught him dangerously by surprise, and it was a good thing he was alone in the elevator. For a second there, even those simple questions had been unanswerable, his entire consciousness one big blank spot, the kind that occurred after you woke up from a bad dream and still weren't absolutely and in all other ways convinced that it hadn't been real. He had no idea what had caused it — exhaustion, maybe, or when was it that he'd last eaten? The frozen pizzas he and Angelina had heated up the night before? Couldn't be. But probably was. He'd set out early that morning, before little necessities like breakfast had entered his consciousness.  
  
_Or maybe whatever insanity caused me to hit the road last Friday in the first place. A sane person doesn't just leave town and show up on his girl's doorstep without telling her first, right? But then, whoever said I was a completely sane person?_  
  
Whatever _had_ possessed him to make that impromptu trip to Wallglass, it wasn't like he was regretting it now even if it would have done him any good. Anything that involved talking more seriously — okay, maybe not _seriously_, but at least talking _more_ — about the road trip that was now looking less like a fantasy and more like an actual plan, was worth questioning one's own sanity. And he was going to be seeing her again in a matter of weeks, that was for sure, and now he thought — was pretty sure — that the time in between would be a little easier to survive.  
  
_"I'm sorry. I'm overreacting. I'm not not glad you told me. I mean, I _am_ glad you told me. Are you okay?"  
_  
He frowned. That hadn't been part of their conversation. Had it? If it hadn't sounded so much like her, he would have just assumed it was something he'd heard on TV. Weird.  
  
_First my getting lost, now this_, he thought, pressing balled-up fists into his closed eyes in an attempt to make the close quarters stop jumping and dancing. He'd ended up in Bayville, of all places, a good-sized but nondescript town in New York nondescript, that is, unless you believed the rumors about the Xavier Institute. Larry wasn't sure he _had_ believed them, but once he'd realized where he was, he couldn't resist checking it out. Under the pretense that he was asking directions, of course. _ She was right — I've gone totally James Bond.  
_  
And he'd been disappointed. From what he'd seen, it was just a normal boarding school.  
  
_"In a manner of speaking."  
_  
This time he hadn't just recalled the words — he'd _heard_ them. Even though the severe strangeness in his head had passed, he was still hearing voices.  
  
"Weird," he said, this time aloud.  
  
_You can't just keep wandering around not knowing what to do to yourself.  
_  
After a couple of seconds, the world had cleared again, no stranger now than it had ever been.  
  
And the elevator had reached his floor.  
_


	36. Dreaming Place

A/N: I made some changes a couple chapters back, just to clarify what happens at the beginning of this one. Also, Loki appears courtesy of Elrohir, without question a writer to watch.  
  
Chapter 35: Dreaming Place  
  
About Saturday... Violet began when she returned home that evening. Actually, she had quite a few questions about Saturday, including why they hadn't told her until now that the dreaded family reunion was going to be held at their house this year. On the other hand, they probably had told her. It wasn't like they hadn't been a little distracted lately.   
  
Darren cut her off. You're going to be here when they come and that's final.   
  
She didn't think she'd even heard her father use the phrase That's final in all her life. That's not --   
  
The family needs to stick together.   
  
_Then why isn't Stevie going to be here?_ she would have normally asked, but had a pretty good idea of what the answer would be. Stephen was an adult with his own life and own plans, after all. It was a good reason, technically the truth and nothing but the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth, was it? The whole truth was that it was just too dangerous. Late news reports the last two nights and and the chills that had chased up and down her spine when she'd heard the sirens that afternoon had reminded her of that all too acutely. Seemed that they couldn't go anywhere lately, or do anything, without this hauntingly familiar feeling of impending doom.   
  
But she had a teenager's sense of priority, no matter how strongly she sometimes denied it, and right now, getting them to listen to her request won out over making a scene. That's not what I was going to say.   
  
They both looked at her.   
  
I was going to ask if I could invite a friend over.   
  
A boyfriend? Charity asked from the doorway. She, too, had apparently just returned home.   
  
No such luck. A girl friend. Teresa Rourke-Cassidy? The name came out like a question. I know it's kind of short notice, but...   
  
Does she want to come? Darren sounded incredulous, like if he wasn't completely thrilled at the prospect of spending time with his own relatives, he couldn't imagine why a complete stranger would be.   
  
And he had there there. I haven't exactly invited her yet.   
  
I don't see why you can't, then, if Teresa and her mother agree.   
  
But Violet was already half-in, half-out of the room, remembering at the last minute to call out, over her shoulder.   
  
Whether that was true or not.   
  
**   
  
I was joking, Teresa said into the phone.   
  
You don't actually have to pretend to be my bodyguard, Violet said firmly. You don't even have to come if you don't want to, actually. You probably have other plans, and I'm not...   
  
Pressuring me? I know you wouldn't do that.   
  
_You do? I mean, I wouldn't?   
_  
Okay, lemme think about it. When are they getting there?   
  
Around lunchtime.   
  
I'm in. If, she added before Violet could say anything more, you come to the Helix Alliance meeting with me in the morning. We could walk back to your house afterward. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, moral support for a moral support. You dig?   
  
Violet had to smile at the archaic slang. I dig.   
  
  
**  
  
Kurt rapped softly, then loudly, on the door to the apartment. There was no answer, any more than there had been one from Stephen a few days before. That day, Kurt hadn't hesitated to teleport inside. Today, he wasn't so eager.  
  
But he had to do it.  
  
The lights were switched off, the shades drawn, but he'd always been able to see in the dark fairly well, and it was what he saw on the couch that stopped him dead for a second. Except in the case of Bobby Drake, of course, he had never believed that a person's blood could actually run cold. He had been wrong. That was what happened, or seemed to happen, when he saw her sprawled there, one shoe kicked off, the other hanging precariously from her foot, one arm dangling nearly to the floor, dark brown locks mostly obscuring a face only a shade lighter.  
  
Bloody images from newspapers flashed in front of Kurt's eyes, in his mind. Memories of curses shouted through the gates of the Institute. Countless news stories about people being harassed or worse for speaking out against the FOH.  
  
He took a couple of steps back, the images moving faster and blending until he couldn't tell one from the next. Reached out a hand to, absurdly, brush her hair from her eyes that would never open again...  
  
...and then she stirred slightly, and he realized that she must have come back from her flight and simply collapsed on the sofa. The jacket of her uniform had been flung across the back of a chair, and her blouse was open to the third button. As Kurt watched, breathing a sigh of relief so loud he was surprised nobody banged on the walls, her remaining shoe fell to the floor with a small clunk. On any other occasion, he would have leaned down to kiss her softly, his Sleeping Beauty in a tower guarded by high-tech security instead of thorns.  
  
But for now, he just stared at her. Such horrible things were happening all over the country -- could it happen here in the near future? Of course it could.  
  
Had they been through this before? Of course they had.  
  
But this wasn't _really_ like the Sentinels, was it? They had only targeted mutants. There were people -- the Friends of Humanity were the largest and the most organized, but far too many imitation groups had formed just the past year or so, each with more extreme theories about mutants than the last) who would want her dead just for not running and hiding whenever she saw him?  
  
He knew she'd said in the past, and would continue to say, that she wasn't afraid.  
  
He knew that she knew the risks -- how could she not? -- and that she could take care of herself.  
  
He knew that nobody else had ever made her feel like this before in his entire life, that he needed her just as much as the X-Men needed him now, that he would be endangering both of them -- all of them -- by continuing to spend so much time with her.  
  
He feared for her... for himself... for his friends. He wondered whether Stephen and Phoebe were overestimating their own strength, foolishly believing that love really could find a way, or if he just wasn't confident enough to believe in it. He wondered if the professor's plan really was a wise one. He'd had faith in Xavier from the very first, but had that or had it not been largely gratitude for making him look ? A gesture that had no meaning now?  
  
No. It had to be more than that.  
  
She stretched and opened her eyes slightly.   
  
  
  
  
  
Velcome back.  
  
She sat up. When did you get here?  
  
Just now.  
  
Well, it's good to see you... She half-rose to hug him, caught the look on his face, and settled back. I heard. Is that what this is about?  
  
Vat else vould it...  
  
I'm sorry.  
  
So am I.  
  
What are you going to do?  
  
Stay at ze Institute. It is my home now. And you?  
  
What about me? She started to rise again, and he held up a disguised hand to forestall her. The sight of his hands in their normal state, and of his face in the mirror, hadn't filled him with _I-am-a-monster-woe-is-me_ angst in _ages_. Kurt, if we let some stupid thing like this come between us, then they win. You know that, right?  
  
He should have been surprised by her intuition. Wasn't. You haven't changed that a bit, _liebchen_.  
  
she contradicted him, shaking her head. Things have changed. When we were in high school, I used to bug you at least once a week to come into class with me one day without that stupid hologram. I don't think I really understood how dangerous it would be then, or maybe I didn't think it mattered. I do now.  
  
Because it's vorse now.  
  
she agreed. Are _you_ scared?  
  
Of course. But it's not just my people who are in danger now. You know that, too --  
  
Yes. I know that, too.  
  
And soon I vill have no choice but to valk around vithout ze stupid hologram.  
  
And I spend most of my time in a flying tin can thousands of miles above the earth. Her voice was husky, but she wasn't crying. Life _is_ dangerous. If you're trying to break up with me, you at least need to change your tactics. I love you. What you are wasn't the reason I started something with you and it isn't going to be the reason I end it.  
  
I do love you, Amanda, he assured her. Zat is not ze problem.  
  
And he still didn't touch her, but did let her rise until they were face to face.  
  
**  
  
A week had passed since Jean Grey had last reminded herself to tell Professor Xavier about the dreams.   
  
They had started when she'd come back to the Institute after graduating from college, acquiring her degree for its own sake and with little idea of what she wanted to do with it, only that her time away from the X-Men had lasted way too long. She had been involved in a bare minimum of campus activities; nothing had ever made her feel more productive than the work she did out of the mansion in Bayville. She doubted anything ever would again. The crusading spirit zinged through her veins like molten lava.   
  
Like fire.   
  
That was the only thing that she remembered about the dreams at first. There had been no pain, or if she had felt it, it had been outstripped exponentially by the... euphoria was the wrong word completely; ecstasy even worse. And both were completely inaccurate anyway. The only time she'd felt anything like it had been when she was seventeen, in her last year of high school, and her powers had gone completely haywire. She doubted she'd forget that day as long as she lived. The voices in her head had chased her into a place inside herself where she could only be reached by the brief touch of Rogue's fingers on her face, fatal to anyone else but a blessing to her... and a salvation. And by Scott's voice in her ears, in her mind (although that hadn't been possible, not then), a call that she had longed to answer...   
  
As if thoughts of him had summoned him temporarily from his own dreaming place, he shifted beside her. Tentative sunlight illuminated the part of his face that wasn't obscured by his ever-present sunglasses, and an sort of noise -- more than a hum but less than a snore -- escaped his lips. She kissed his bare shoulder, but he had become silent again. She could have easily drifted off again, safe with the one thing that had been constant and hadn't changed when she'd returned... could have, if she hadn't been so troubled.   
  
Although the voices, and the destruction she caused with less than a stray thought, had been literally overwhelming, there had been a small, perverse part of her that not only tolerated it all as a reality but welcomed it as a challenge, and hungered for the energy to accept it. In her dreams, she felt it again... the possibility that if she reached out, she could connect to every other mind on the planet, see through eyes in Canada and Taiwan and Antarctica, if she even needed to stop there. The psychic equivalent of shading her eyes to see a great distance.   
  
They were just dreams. Endless emotion and power and life jammed into a few moments of rapid eye movement. But when they'd started recurring, she'd been slightly uneasy. Not thunderstorms-and-giant-clowns terrified, just on edge. And usually there had been enough to do during the day to keep her from thinking about it, anyhow.   
  
Then this had happened. A potentially fatal blow against her kind, struck by a man who had once lauded her as the strongest link in the school soccer team. And the concern that -- she'd been fearing -- might need to be directed toward her own sanity (and the safety of the others, although she didn't know why she'd thought that) was focused on other matters, and other people: namely, the students.   
  
The younger ones had gone into town in twos and threes, each group accompanied by a teacher. They had been questioned, had filled out the necessary forms, one at a time, however -- it made the interrogators nervous to see the interrogated banding together. Damaged their authority.   
  
A couple of the kids had started to cry on the way there or the way back, and more than a couple, such as Paige Guthrie, had at first refused to go at all. Her brother, accompanied by Jean herself, had taken turns talking to her, cajoling, reasoning, Sam brushing the butter-yellow locks out of her eyes and calling her one or two really weird nicknames, both of them assuring her that they were on her side, they didn't like this either, but to comply would be the best thing right now, until they could think of something else. Something hopefully better. Finally, they'd called in Professor Xavier, who's managed to coax her from her position on the Uncommon Room couch like a parent extricating a much younger child from her beloved toy store with a promise that they'd come back tomorrow.   
  
Whether that promise was true or not.   
  
The first protesters had arrived yesterday, with such demonstrations of wit, determination, and poetic genius as, _One, two, three, four, you muties don't know what's in store! Five, six, seven eight, surrender before it's too late!_ Now, as Jean heard the rumble of an approaching car outside, cutting into the chirp and whistle of what was usually her favorite time of day, she groaned inwardly and sat up. This time, Scott didn't even shift his position.   
  
The window gave a usually splendid view of the Institute's front grounds, all lush grass and abundant flowerbeds (kept perfect with a little help from Ororo's miniature showers) in the summer, sloping oh-so-gradually toward the main gates. This morning, the view was wrapped in fog, but that was completely natural, and gave the whole scene the appearance of a haunted manor in a guilty-pleasure horror movie.   
  
The car turned out to be a yellow taxicab. How it had gotten through the gates was a mystery in itself at first, but at least became plausible (although she doubted it was actually the answer) when Jean got a good view of the passenger: a slim, chestnut-haired woman carrying a suitcase in one hand. As if she, too, sensed the presence of her unseen observer, she turned her delicate face up toward the window. Blue eyes, magnified and clarified by wire-rimmed glasses, stared up into Jean's green ones.   
  
she cried softly, mostly to herself, lost for a second in schoolgirl excitement. Eagerness and curiosity (she couldn't believe she'd almost forgotten what day it was) won out over her usual need to look nice, and she resolved to dress as quickly as possible.   
  
**   
  
We moved back to Northbrook at first, and now we're living together in Chicago. Lance is working at a construction site, and I'm finishing up with school. After delivering the Spark Notes version of the time that had passed since she had vanished from Bayville without a trace, Kitty dropped back into silence. Jean didn't pressure her; she'd been expecting this.   
  
Nor did she really expect an answer to, Have you been talking to any of the others?   
  
But she got one. Just Jubilee.   
  
  
  
She contacted me. Otherwise... Her silence left the rest of that sentence plain: _I owe you people nothing._   
  
That's not fair. If you didn't want anything to do with us, you shouldn't have come back.   
  
Do you think I wanted to leave? It wasn't an accusation or an insult, just a question.   
  
Jean was irritated all the same. This was way too much like the kind of argument she used to have with her sister, Sara. Or maybe with Rogue. I think you didn't know what you wanted. Besides Lance Alvers, and that's not enough.   
  
I _know_ that. I wanted to live my own life. I wanted to stop worrying about what the team would think of this, the team would think of that. And I didn't come back just so you could make me feel guilty about it. Nothing that's going on right now is fair.   
  
I know.   
  
Kitty hesitated, then asked, How have the kids been taking it?   
  
Not great. A bunch of them left last week.   
  
For good?   
  
And the rest are...   
  
Kitty finished for her. I know the feeling. It's like giving up.   
  
Jean was about to explain Xavier's reasoning and what he had in mind for the returning mutants, but she was temporarily diverted by a shifting in the psychic atmosphere, an unmistakeable -- and, unfortunately, all too familiar -- feeling of being watched. Josie, and... She paused and listened. Loki. Come out, come out, wherever you are.   
  
The air on the far side of the dining room rippled, snapped, and coalesced into a petite, ghost-pale brunette in an oversized T-shirt, and, after a moment, a young man with shoulder-length hair and a chiseled, arrogant-looking face. Good morning, he said.   
  
What have I told you two about invasions of privacy?   
  
Don't know, the girl said cheerfully. She turned to her companion. Do you remember what she told us about invasions of privacy? He only smiled.   
  
Did they teleport? Kitty asked.   
  
Josie has the ability to turn invisible, Jean explained. Loki is a sort of illusionist who manipulates --   
  
Light and chaos, he finished proudly.   
  
Like Wanda, right?   
  
If that helps.   
  
Where's Paco? The third member of their trio, she clarified for Kitty's sake. A card-carrying skateboard freak.   
  
  
  
Jean cut her off. By the time it had become okay to mention Ororo's nephew in front of her, it had become second nature not to mention him at all.   
  
You're right, you know. I didn't want to come back here. Because of memories like that one, and because... She shrugged. I was the one who made the choice to leave. I... I burned all the bridges.   
  
So you're wondering if you have the right to be back...   
  
The clouded, wary look was back in Kitty's eyes. And with it, an unmistakable sign of expectations fulfilled. She had known that that was what she was supposed to be thinking.   
  
One way or another, it's good to have you back, Jean said resignedly, but softly, reassuringly, as if her friend were still venting her frustration about the latest fight between her parents or a failed mission that she was convinced was her fault. Even if you think otherwise, you made the right decision.  
  



	37. Behind Closed Doors

Chapter 36: Behind Closed Doors  
  
To: fuzzy_elf@xnet.edu  
From: stevie_wonder@hotmail.com  
Subject: graduation plans  
  
So how goes it at the Institute? Do you know what Rogue's planning on doing after she finishes with school? College? Travel? Stay on like Jean and Scott? Not sure anything about that girl would really surprise me.  
  
Man, I can't believe how close it is to graduation.  
  
I mean I literally can't believe it. Every time I dwell on it, I think I lose a few dozen more brain cells. It's on the 18th -- are you coming? We're each allowed five guests. Angelina wouldn't waste her options on her mom and Leon, so Phoebe's taking care of that. She also invited Isobel, a friend of ours from what seems like way back in the day.   
  
I think you would have liked Isobel a lot. Or at least you would have liked her back then, when she was more in touch with her inner freak.   
  
So besides my parents and Violet, I've still got two extra tickets. Is Amanda interested?  
  
Let me know.  
  
-- Stephen   
  
PS. Mrs. Germaine asked me to write a speech and read it out loud at the ceremony, and I said I'd think about it, but I'm planning on saying no. Mostly because Get In Touch With Your Inner Freak wouldn't go over too big with the audience. And I don't have any other ideas.  
  
**_  
  
Bolivar Trask was not an eavesdropper by nature. A door that had slipped open to the merest crack did not, under normal circumstances, tempt him to stand near it and listen to the phone conversation taking place on the other side. Aside from which, he recognized all too well the rift that had grown between his son and himself, and had a pretty good idea of how well it would go over if Lawrence found out. But these were, after all, special circumstances.  
  
What do you mean? I went home. I told you I was -- He was cut off, apparently, by whoever was on the other end. That girl from Wallglass with whom he was so besotted, probably. No. I did, he went on when he'd been allowed to speak again. We spent the weekend together, saw your sister's school play, and then I left this morning. He was speaking in a slow, patient, slightly perplexed voice, as if wondering if she'd gone crazy... or he had. Remember? During the play, you asked me if you knew what kind of guy would willingly wear tight green pants, I said you couldn't pay me enough to do it, we both laughed, and then afterward we went back to your house...  
  
She knew. Of course she knew. That was why his own brief conversation with the girl had been intercepted by his daughter, who, for reasons of her own, was determined to throw a wrench in the whole operation. She was currently locked in her own room, after staring in open-mouthed horror at her brother for several seconds as if she'd figured it out, too, from the moment he'd first opened his mouth.  
  
...when I got home today, Tanya told me to call you. Don't worry, I got home okay. Pause. No. I'm alone. Pause. Yes, I'm sure. I'm not _that_ paranoid about what goes on in this family.  
  
Irony at its best. Actually, if this whole sorry mess wasn't an example of the ways in which the powers that be operated at their most sadistic, he wasn't sure what was.  
  
There was another long pause. Approaching footsteps. And the door slammed shut. Had he been seen?  
  
A second later, it seemed, the stereo had been turned on loudly enough to obscure any conversation. _I suppose I deserved that.  
  
_Sighing, Dr. Trask returned to his desk in a corner of the living room.   
  
Picked up one of the many blueprints obscuring its surface.  
  
Studied it for a moment.  
  
Put it down again.  
  
Even before he'd fully committed to ignoring the voice of guilt by stifling it with professional obligations, he knew that the effort would be futile. That couldn't be good. It had always worked in the past.  
  
Of course, in the past...  
  
_I have two children of my own, and I want to ensure that it is them and their kind who will inherit our world and our future. _  
  
He should have known that those words would come back and, as Lawrence's group of friends liked to say, bite him on the ass. But hadn't they been the truth, after all?  
  
So what's going to happen now?  
  
Another voice from the past? No, this one was speaking from the opposite end of the room, and it was now more curious than angry and horrified. Tanya had emerged from the shadows of the hallway, cautiously, eyes still guarded, and the reason he'd been confused for a moment was that she not only resembled, but _sounded_ like, her mother had during one of their arguments. Which one? It didn't matter. They had all been the same, anyway. Being married to a secret agent interfered with her own dreams, her own version of happily-ever-after. He had thought at the time that she hadn't yet realized that there was no such thing.  
  
And that question had always been part of their whether it was spoken aloud or not.  
  
Now, at least, he had an answer. Or at least a response. I thought you weren't speaking to me.  
  
  
  
You knew something like this might have to happen.  
  
And you knew what I thought about it, Tanya returned.  
  
And _you_ knew that... He stopped. This is ridiculous.  
  
You're right, it is. I saw you when... when Xavier was talking about brainwashing him. She issued a disgusted snort. Just so you could have your little heir apparent back.  
  
I accepted the services of an expert, Trask corrected her. He wasn't interested in hearing this again, and deliberately ignored her last question, mostly because he couldn't possibly have denied the accusation if he'd tried. Someone with the skills and the technology to do what I couldn't. You're the one who keeps using words like brainwash' and mind control'. And even if I had refused outright, it was still Lawrence's decision. Xavier made that perfectly clear.  
  
I can't believe he'd _ever_ want...   
  
Believe it. I didn't have a choice. But was that really true? Hadn't he had a choice all along? Stay with S.H.I.E.L.D. and try to persuade them to take action against the mutant plague... or hide in plain sight within the government offices while taking matters into his own hands. Involve his wife in the project... or shut her out for her own good, pretending not to hear her incessant questions or, eventually, her frequent threats to leave him. Let his children make up their own minds about the situation, and risk losing them... or make sure they knew what to be afraid of. Face the reality that they could be just as easily tainted as could anyone they met on the street... or ignore it. Shut it out. Pretend it couldn't possibly happen. Convince himself that there would be a solution, just like always. And when the solution had finally presented itself, take it or leave it.   
  
Keep Elizabeth safe. Keep Lawrence and Tanya safe. Keep every normal human in the _world_ safe from the catastrophe that would -- he still wondered, how could it possibly _not_? -- result from having to share that world with genetically altered, potentially dangerous superbeings. If he _had_ had a choice, it had always been clear.  
  
Crystal clear.  
  
What's done is done, he said, as much in answer to that question as a means of closing the subject. There's nothing you can do about it. If you didn't want me to take action, then why did you tell me in the first place?  
  
He had her there. She glanced down at the carpet at first, but didn't avoid eye contact for more than that one second. I don't know. But I'm not going to let you involve him in any more of your anti-mutant crap.  
  
He knew she wasn't kidding about that.   
  
However, the door at which they'd both been glancing periodically opened before he could think of a snappy retort -- or indeed, do anything more than stare, just as she had -- and before she, having had the last word, could stalk off, leaving the engineer of the solution to the mutant problem quite alone. Lawrence stood in the doorway to his room, blinking. What's going on? Seeing the looks on their faces, Is something wrong?  
  
Nothing is wrong, Trask jumped in before his daughter could answer. He had no idea of the actual nature of the replacement memories, or even who had constructed them, and wasn't sure he wanted to know. For once, he was content not being privy to the gritty details. Everything is finally right.  
  
Another lie, that, but one more wouldn't hurt.   
  
_**  
  
To: stevie_wonder@hotmail.com  
From: fuzzy_elf@xnet.edu  
Subject: re: graduation plans  
  
Rogue hasn't said anything. Not that any of us are really surprised. I don't think even she knows yet.  
  
But yes, I am interested. Amanda is interested. Send us the tickets as soon as you can. I think Get In Touch With Your Inner Freak has a good ring to it, whatever you decide to use it for. And I speak as someone whose freak is entirely outer.  
  
I am not a gossip, though. You know that. But speaking of unexpected guests, you will not believe who showed up at the Institute today...  
  
**  
  
_In books, a perfectly ordinary day was a sign that something unbelievable was about to begin. In real life, it seemed, or at least in this particular case, it was more like a terrible sign that something unbelievable -- and not in a good way -- had ended. Once again, Tanya had to force herself to get out of bed, wash, dress, and apply her makeup, and it was all she could do to stop her skin from crawling when she heard Larry's almost ritual call of, Finish up and get down here, or I'm leaving without you! And she knew exactly why it gave her the creeps: he was behaving as if it had just been a basically normal weekend. Of course, in his mind, it had.  
  
Wasn't that what she'd wanted? Wasn't that what they'd _all_ wanted?   
  
_You are not to tell anyone about this. Not your girlfriends, not Douglas Ramsey, nobody. Do you understand?_  
  
His words recalled, all too clearly, another promise she'd made... and broken.  
  
"_I mean nobody. Not Lorraine, not Vanessa, not whatever upperclassman you're doodling into a heart this week. Not even Dad."  
  
_And look how that had turned out.  
  
Hammering on the bathroom door. Last chance!  
  
Okay, okay, okay! she shouted back., injecting as much exasperation into that one repeated word as was humanly possible. That was tradition, too, and the ease with which she slipped into it was just as frightening, because of _course_ it was what she'd wanted. After all, this was better than if he'd been handed over to the FOH or turned into some weird experiment in X-gene suppression.  
  
But if it was so much better, then why had she acted the way she had last night?  
  
And why did the helpless, frightened, and most of all _lonely_ feeling in the pit of her stomach refuse to go away?  
  
She took a final look at herself in the mirror -- all she could say was she looked a far cry from the glitter-and-bubblegum party animal who'd left the city for the middle of nowhere nearly six months ago --and raced to collect her things.  
  
Math homework -- finished. _The Odyssey_ -- unfinished, but who cared? History assignment? What history assignment? She vaguely remembered leaning over to Trevor and asking him for the page numbers, but had no recollection of what those numbers were. And it wasn't in her assignment book. She cursed under her breath.  
  
Lunch money. Notebook. Pen with much-gnawed cap. Make sure she had it all with her. Start over, like she was supposed to.  
  
After she took care of one last thing.  
  
Lying to Doug, not to mention to her friends, would by no means be the most horrible part of all this -- she couldn't even begin to pick out just one moment that had been the definitive _worst_; not yet, anyway -- but somehow, she couldn't seem to remember the last time it had been so difficult to formulate a simple excuse, get a few words out. She usually had no trouble whatsoever speaking her mind. That was usually the _problem_.  
  
The first day of the rest of their lives had barely just begun. Where would they go from here? Could they really start over? She had been wondering about that all along, and had been more fearful than thoughtful of the possibilities. She had asked those very questions the night before, not really expecting an answer. And if she hadn't understood then why she hadn't gotten one, she did now.  
  
She wasn't the only one who was afraid.  
  
_  
  
_  
_


	38. All Together Now

Chapter 37: All Together Now  
  
shy_violet: Don't you ever sleep?  
  
Krackel: Don't you?  
  
shy_violet: I was. I woke up.  
  
Krackel: Bad dreams?  
  
shy_violet: Maybe.  
  
Krackel: Me too.  
  
shy_violet: I wish I could have nightmares about the stuff that used to scare me.  
  
Krackel: Which were  
  
shy_violet. Closet monsters. Scary movies. Movies make a big impression on me, I guess.  
  
Krackel: What's your favorite?  
  
shy_violet: Fellowship of the Ring. Better Off Dead.  
  
Krackel: See, Fellowship I can understand. But a flaky teen movie?  
  
shy_violet: It's not a flaky teen movie.  
  
Krackel. Is. Guy meets girl, guy loses girl, guy pines for girl, guy meets new girl. Am I right?  
  
shy_violet: Well yeah  
  
Krackel: Thought so.  
  
shy_violet: Have you seen it?  
  
Krackel: Don't plan to.  
  
shy_violet: You might like it. The main character's mother cooks recipes with tentacles and wears reindeer antlers.  
  
Krackel: Tacky, diverting gimmickery.  
  
shy_violet: You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? Now I'm going to say something snotty about your favorite movie. What is it, by the way?   
  
Krackel: The Matrix. Hands down.  
  
shy_violet: See, that's one of the ones I wasn't so crazy about.  
  
Krackel: Don't laugh.  
  
shy_violet: If I was, how would you know?  
  
Krackel: Point. I remember going through this phase where I thought everything from that movie was true. You're laughing.  
  
shy_violet: I'm not. But that's what I didn't like. The whole our-world-is-a-lie thing. Bad enough that our minds are being controlled, worse that everything we know and see -- everything we love -- is just part of that.  
  
Krackel: But you got over it.  
  
shy_violet: I figured that if it was a lie, it was a pretty good one.  
  
Krackel: You mean good as in clever? Well-constructed?  
  
shy_violet: No. I just mean good.   
  
Krackel: That movie was the ultimate way of putting my problems with my stupid classmates in some kind of acceptable perspective. All I had to do was imagine them as blind, brainwashed fools.  
  
shy_violet: So what do you think now?   
  
Krackel: I've given up looking for rebels in black trench coats, at least.  
  
shy_violet: That's a relief.  
  
Krackel: And maybe you have a point. I get along better with computers than I do with people. What we have, that exists only through cyberspace and technology, is one of the realest things I know.   
  
shy_violet: Wow.  
  
Krackel: Yeah.  
  
shy_violet: Nobody's ever said that to me before.  
  
Krackel: There's never been anybody to say it too.  
  
shy_violet: Puh-leeze. I bet you say that to a thousand girls a day.  
  
Krackel: So I'm a geek and a playa? A physical impossibility, my dear.  
  
shy_violet: Don't do that.  
  
Krackel: Don't do what?  
  
shy_violet: That. Call me My dear.  
  
Krackel: Sorry.  
  
shy_violet: Mind telling me what you were dreaming about?  
  
Krackel: The thing that's going to happen tomorrow, I guess.  
  
shy_violet: The march?  
  
Krackel: Yeah.  
  
shy_violet: Having second thoughts?  
  
Krackel: And third, and fourth.  
  
shy_violet: Your parents don't actually want you to go, do they? Whether you're a genius or not.  
  
Krackel: You got me. But I'm going anyway.  
  
shy_violet: Great!  
  
Krackel: You're acting like what I'm doing is going to make a difference. I'm just a walking face in a walking crowd. I'm not used to this whole passionate crusader thing.  
  
shy_violet: Crusade? Don't make me laugh. You're just a kid who's standing up for something he cares about, which is more than I can say for most kids I know. And that's pretty good on its own, so don't think it has to be any more than that. I don't want to be the girl who watches from the sidelines saying stuff like I believe in you. But I believe in you, okay?  
  
Krackel: Thanks. I think.  
  
shy_violet: No problem. I'm impressed that you've figured out that much about yourself.  
  
Krackel: Anybody who thinks they know everything about themselves at sixteen can be diagnosed as delusional. I just make things up as I go.  
  
shy_violet: Very modest.  
  
Krackel: So what are your bad dreams about? I mean if you don't want to tell me, then that's OK.  
  
shy_violet: I don't mind.  
  
**  
  
What Stephen noticed first about the blond, blue-eyed man who answered the door wasn't the expensive-looking outfit or the disapproving expression. Nor was it the pair of wings that emerged from the back stranger's dress shirt, extending nearly to the ground. It was, instead, the rush of familiarity that both the face and the wings brought forth, even though the two of them had never met face-to-face in their lives. You're the Avenging Angel, aren't you? he asked without thinking.  
  
The man's frown deepened for a second before relaxing. I was once. It's'Archangel' now, when I'm in uniform.  
  
And otherwise...  
  
He didn't quite smile, but did extend his hand. Warren Worthington.  
  
Stephen shook it, supplying his own name. I'm, um, a former student.  
  
Warren was apparently trying to keep his voice politely detached, but wasn't very good at it, and his next words explained why. Nobody ever mentioned you.  
  
I wasn't here for very long. He had, in fact, been there for nearly a year, but realized that he wasn't really surprised that his name didn't come up much.  
  
You were never an X-Man?  
  
I almost was, Stephen admitted. _And if they're all like you nowadays, is as close as I ever want to get. Now, are you going to keep looking at me like I'm a deranged space monster, or are you going to let me in?_ When he was finally allowed to step over the threshold, it seemed for a second that a door had been opened to the past. When his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness after the bright sunlight outside -- all sinking feelings notwithstanding, it had been a perfect day for a trip -- the foyer he'd first glimpsed six and a half years ago, as a frightened and confused teenager, hadn't changed much either in appearance or atmosphere. But he was nervous now in a different way than he had been then, and was more than slightly surprised when no chills ran down his spine and -- _okay, fine, I _was_ expecting it_ -- he wasn't seized by a fit of unstoppable mental agony.   
  
Nothing had happened yet.  
  
Nothing was _going_ to happen.  
  
Kitty was next to emerge from the hallway. Shortened hair, wide blue eyes, just as Jubilee had greeted him on one of his long-ago visits (but without the glasses magnifying those eyes to nearly _anime-_standard). _And I broke her heart a week later._ They hadn't spoken since then, and if she did show up, as Kurt had said she would, he would have to think of something to say to her.   
  
The fuzzy one had no idea what had become of Kitty after she graduated, whether she was ever coming back, and, if she did, whether she would be alone... as she was now. If Lance had stayed in the picture, there was nothing to show for it. Of all his teammates, Stephen had always counted her among the least likely to ditch the cause and strike out on her own.   
  
  
  
The two of them had never been the best of friends -- he had mostly known her through Jubes -- but she strode forward and hugged him briefly nonetheless. You're back, she observed.  
  
I could say the same for you. Air pulled outward to make room for the sulfur-trailing demon that had just ported into the room. Hey, Kurt.  
  
Do you have your sea legs back yet? Kurt asked as if they'd just seen each other half an hour ago.  
  
That's what I'm afraid of. Stephen couldn't resist looking around again, but this time it was more for want of anything else to say. But... hey, Kitty, what have you been up to? Everyone wondered...  
  
Why I left? That hadn't been what he was asking, but she completed his sentence with a cynical smile that was totally at odds with his recollection of her. This place... it wasn't me, she said firmly, as if life with the X-Men had been a dress that didn't match her skin tones.  
  
That too, yeah, but also how you were dealing with... all of this.   
  
Kitty took off her glasses, became very interested in polishing one of the lenses on the corner of her shirt, and replaced them. We're going to be... discussing that, Jean said. Bitterness. Uncertainty. Fear so well disguised that the listener could have been imagining it. The others are in the library. Talking. Catching up. We're still waiting on Jubilee... and on Alex and Lorna.  
  
_Catching up._ Reminiscing, rehashing what had gone before to avoid thinking about the present. Or the future, for that matter.   
  
Kitty said again, more slowly, Scott's brother, and his girlfriend, Lorna Dane.  
  
I thought Scott didn't have any family. Except he might have known, once. Second time in the space of a few minutes that he'd blurted something completely inane. Had the professor infused the air here with some sort of magnetic field that drew one's foot automatically to one's mouth?  
  
They vere separated after the accident, but then... Kurt began, and then shook his head. No. Zat is too complicated. Alex lived here for a vile and fell in love vith Lorna ven she arrived -- another long story -- but zey left together last year...  
  
Is he still surfing? Kitty asked as they started walking.  
  
He vants to get his degree in geology, if you'll believe it. Lorna has similiar interests, so she left vith him. But I cannot imagine him settling down anyvere not a short driving distance from the nearest breakers, even in the name of higher education. For Stephen's benefit, Alex can generate plasma blasts from his hands, by the way. Lorna is an excellent fighter, and also manipulates metal.  
  
Any connection to --  
  
Kurt said firmly. And I vouldn't mention it to either of zem if I vere you. They had reached an all-too-familiar door. Your entrance of choice, _Katzch_ -- er, Kitty?  
  
She considered for a moment, then brightened. Why not? For old times' sake. And she took each of their hands.  
  
Scott and Jean were crowded together in an oversized, overstuffed armchair. Mr. McCoy sat in another chair nearby. Bobby was on his feet, but he paused mid-pace and looked up when they phased through the door. Ororo, Sam, and Rahne shared a couch, and Logan, in a very typical pose, leaned against the mantel of the cold and silent fireplace. How many times over a single fall and winter had Stephen watched the flames dance within, knowing that they couldn't possibly entrance him more than what Xavier was trying to say? Even as the others raised their voices in a blending of and Welcome back and I'm glad you're all here, they were drowned out by another, stronger one, speaking out of the corner of memory that he still visited sometimes in dreams... trapped with the possibilities, the lectures, the warnings... unsure -- as he had been then -- of whether he could find a way out, or if he even wanted to.  
  
_I wasn't lying when I said that you had excellent potential_... _With power like this, the possibilities are endless, but you have to choose your moments_... _What is wrong with you, Stephen? If I didn't know better, I would say that you _wanted_ your mind taken over!_  
  
The voices from the past seemed to fade and vanish, and with them the caged feeling -- which had once been almost literal -- and there was no telling whether they had been simply strong memories or something more. Xavier was had positioned his wheelchair so he had a clear view of the entire group, and although he greeted Stephen as warmly as the others had, his eyes seemed to say, _I knew none of you could really stay away from here. I knew it. _We're just waiting for the last three now, is that right?  
  
Yes, Professor, Jean said dutifully.  
  
  
  
What's this about? Kitty asked bluntly.  
  
Xavier ignored her tone. You'll see.  
  
_If we all want to wait that long_, Stephen thought, surprising himself with those words, an idea he didn't even know it was safe to have.  
  
**  
  
While Jean Grey had been tossing and turning in her sleep, envisioning herself as a being of fire and life incarnate, Violet Spencer had been communicating frantically over the Internet with Everett Thomas. And she was preparing to meet Teresa in town -- provided she wasn't snagged on her way out the door and forced to help prepare the house for the impending doom that would be visited upon them later today -- at the same moment that her brother was calculating the risks of invading Xavier's mind to discover whatever truth existed behind the reunion.   
  
In her most casual outfit -- she'd opted against wearing a dress this time -- Violet knew she looked at least presentable. She thought that some makeup trick might hide the circles under her eyes, but if there was one, she didn't know it. And she didn't even want to pretend that she didn't know how they'd gotten there.  
  
_So what are your bad dreams about?  
_  
So she'd told him about the imagined consequences, both impossible and absurd, of helping Ice. How she dreamed about being on the run from people who cared about her, even if they were unrecognizable to her waking mind. And she almost mentioned another fragment of memory: this of the tangible presence of another mind in contact with hers, paralyzing her with fear. But she held back at the last second, and probably just as well.  
  
For now.  
  
Most importantly, and for the first time, she didn't regret a single thing she _did_ tell him...or a single thing she'd heard.  
  
**  
  
They'd moved from the auditorium to one of the upstairs classrooms, one of the few that had a TV with an outside cable connection. Several teenagers, as always a mixture of classmates and strangers, sat behind, against, an on top of desks, nearly every eye glued to the screen.  
  
The protest against the Mutant Registration Act, which began with a few local agitators early this morning at Times Square, is swelling surprisingly quickly -- in both numbers and determination -- with every block, the live reporter was saying. Teresa's eyes, however, weren't fixed on the woman with the microphone, nor on the dark-haired young man in the rumpled suit who stood next to her, carrying what looked like a large portfolio, but on the people rushing past behind them. No matter how unlikely it was, she was searching for a face she recognized. A connection. Bets are still on as to whether controversial mutant-rights advocate Charles Xavier will make a surprise appearance. Both sides seem to agree that it would be just like him.  
  
Cellophane crinkled in a corner of the room. Caroline had opened one of those disgusting energy bars and was eating it noisily. Not a few other people, however, were murmuring just as noisily. _Huh? What did I miss?_  
  
Everyone wants to know your opinion on this issue, the reporter was saying to the man with the portfolio.  
  
Who scowled, reminding Teresa suddenly, shockingly, of... who? Despite his disheveled appearance, his features -- especially the eyes -- were very attractive, marked by an anger that made them even more striking. She recognized him, all right, but she had always been _terrible_ with celebrities' names. You know my opinion, he said into the mike. It's not just about the corruption of the gene pool anymore. Muties disrupt everything -- our media, our schools, our everyday lives. And people get hurt in disruptions. Outspoken people like my father, sure, but innocents too.  
  
But mightn't some of the disruptions be for --  
  
The greater good? her interviewee repeated. That's what they want you to think.  
  
Where was Violet, anyway?  
  
There were several more interviews. We're not hurting anyone by marching... They're just a bunch of idiots who think they can save the world ... Hellbound cretins ... We're all involved, whether we know it or not. They watched for about twenty more minutes before Mr. Hudson switched the TV off, met by groans that were surreal in both their volume and their multitude. Teresa thought of zombie children in cartoons, clamoring for homework and Brussels sprouts. So what does anybody think? their advisor asked.  
  
Ryan, whose favorite cousin had the ability to climb walls like a spider and who had been the first person in the group to hear about Skill Monsters, was also the first today to speak up. I think you should turn it back on.  
  
Did anyone happen to catch a glimpse of, ah, Ceci or Felix?  
  
Or Everett...  
  
Yet now that she thought about it, Teresa was privately glad that there had been no sign of their friends. If they'd been lost in the crowd, then at least there was less of a chance that they'd been screaming obscenities or anarchist slogans, or pulling up their shirts to display letters spelling Mutant Rights Now on their stomachs.   
  
Beofre anyone else could answer, Ryan jumped in with, I mean, we all _know_ the freaks are polluting our gene pool. It's old news. And everyone laughed at that, even though it wasn't really funny.  
  
That was when Violet poked her head in through the door, glanced around, but didn't quite enter the room. Sorry I'm late. I was mincing things.  
  
A likely story. Caroline lowered her glasses and stroked an imaginary beard.  
  
You caught me. I'm actually spying for a radical cult bent on human sacrifice, and I've just given them the signal to come and torch this nest of non-believing hellions. She said that completely dead-pan, and in the end, it was less her joke than the look on Mr. Hudson's face that made the laughter in the room brief but genuine.  
  
**  
  
His prediction about reminisces was dead on, especially when Scott's brother and his girl joined them.  
  
For the next... it was probably nearly an hour... nobody seemed cabable of asking any questions that didn't start with, Hey, remember when..., the memories in question ranging from a close call on a mission in Tibet to that time Kurt kissed Bobby under the mistletoe.  
  
Warren raised one blond eyebrow. You're not serious.  
  
No, she is not! Kurt said firmly.  
  
He meant to get _me_, Kitty said dryly.  
  
The other eyebrow. This is getting more interesting by the second.  
  
It was actually just before Rogue and I went to find you, Scott told him.  
  
Warren's lips tightened momentarily at the mention of Rogue's name, and he either didn't notice or pretended not to notice the looks exchanged by the others. I'd made up my mind to stay away from people like you before I even knew that people like you existed.  
  
We're flattered, said Bobby.  
  
I changed my mind, didn't I?  
  
It's cool.  
  
You told us of Mesmero's return. Storm was speaking for the first time, and just like back in the day, when she spoke, people listened. You helped us fight Magneto even though we were the ones who cautioned you against joining in the fray. Her words seemed to be more for the benefit of those who hadn't been there at the time, as Warren was looking vaguely bored -- _Yes, you have me, you were right and I was wrong, now can we get on with it?_  
  
To her, he simply said, I'm aware.  
  
Excuse me one moment, Xavier cut into the chatter, and closed his eyes.  
  
Stephen, who'd been revising his impression of the Angel (although he still had only the vaguest idea of who Mesmero was), tensed ever so slightly, but nothing happened.  
  
A few minutes later, the door to the library swung open. The professor had just been running a mental search for late arrivals. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.  
  
_Stop thinking like that!   
_   
Hi, everyone, Jubilee said softly. It was that unobtrusive, almost shy voice, not the absence of her yellow raincoat and pink sunglasses (the others were used to this), that made someone who hadn't seen her in five years blink a couple of times to make sure he was really seeing what he was seeing.  
  
Well, he _was_ really seeing her, absolutely no question about that. Her hair, long again, was tied back in a ponytail, and bracelets tinkled on her bare arms. He thought he could finally say objectively that she was just as pretty as he remembered her.  
  
_Are you sure it's only objectively?  
  
Positive._   
  
She surveyed the room, then addressed Kitty, as if they were the only ones there. You came. I didn't think...  
  
Obviously you're not alone, Kitty said, rising from her seat. The two stared at each other for a long moment, then Jubes laughed for apparently no reason at all, flinging her arms around her fellow veteran mall-crawler. Jean gave an isn't-that-cute smile, Kurt looked relieved to see Kitty happy at last, and Warren averted his eyes as if the emotional reunion between the girls -- the women, rather -- embarrassed him.  
  
Thank you for coming, Jubilation, said Xavier.  
  
No problem, she said nonchalantly. I needed you guys right now.  
  
Yes, and as Kitty remarked, you are not the only one.  
  
Puzzled stares from everyone except Logan, Ororo, and Jean.  
  
Xavier waited until every eye and mind was fixed on him before continuing. I don't think it's necessary to remind you all of how the tables have turned against our people. We at the mansion have faced as much... harassment and suspicion in the past week as we thought we'd face in a lifetime. This has brought out the worst in humans who have always wondered about us, and made the ones who are more than curious... I think you can imagine.  
  
Alex reflexively shook his sun-bleached bangs out of his face and tightened an arm around the shoulders of the green-tressed beauty by his side.  
  
Alex and Lorna have already faced that, Xavier added quietly. Their gifts --  
  
Let me tell it, Lorna interrupted. What there is to tell, anyway. The administration -- she injected those five syllables with as much bitterness as she could -- has been checking on registered mutants in the student body, right? Alex's and my powers are too dangerous, so out we go.  
  
Scott rose from his chair. You didn't tell me --  
  
We weren't sure about what we wanted to do next, Alex told his brother.  
  
If the present circumstances prove anything, it's that the time for hiding is over. Xavier was clearly just getting warmed up. We have to make our intentions known to the humans. We must let budding mutants know that our services are available. And we must be prepared for whatever... other challenges may come our way, whether it's a form of vengeance from Magneto's quarter or a re-emergence of the Sentinels. He fixed his best piercing gaze on each mutant in turn. And that's why all of you are here.  
  
**  
  
Violet had introduced the Rourke girl as my friend, Teresa, and despite that, or more likely due to it, Evelyn's radar had started bleeping almost immediately. Darren didn't pick up on the bleeps at first, much less know what they meant, until she pulled him with a nervous glance in their mother's direction and a shout of We're going to check on the Jell-O. The shout had been for the benefit of their father, who didn't trust those hearing machines.  
  
Once in the kitchen, Evelyn didn't even take a step toward the refrigerator. I saw them come in together, and the way Violet kept looking at her.  
  
  
  
Is it true? I won't mention it to Mom if you won't.  
  
Evvie, I don't know what you're talking about.  
  
If it was Melissa, God knows I wouldn't want anyone advertising it all over the streets.  
  
Not surprisingly, there was only one that occurred to Darren just then. But that was the case, then why was she bringing Teresa into it?  
  
They are... She leaned closer and whispered the last bit. ...just friends, aren't they?  
  
He thought for a minute that he might have laughed if she hadn't looked and sounded so worried. That killed the humor in it. Not as far as I know, he said.  
  
Evelyn let out her breath. She's a wonderful girl.  
  
_She'd still be a wonderful girl even if you were right._  
  
_And what if she'd been right about what I thought she was asking?  
_  
And she's changed so much.  
  
We all have.  
  
Oh, I know, said Evelyn. You're in show business now.  
  
I am?  
  
Charity told me about the screenplay you're working on, she said half-smugly. Will you be moving out there?  
  
At least she hadn't said, _My little brother in Hollywood!_ It's going to be shot in New York, starting next spring.  
  
Was she remembering her own adolescent dreams to become an actress, dreams that had made an unexpected detour when she'd met the supposedly brilliant but unquestionably bland Albert? Marcia and I are both very impressed, though.  
  
And Mom?  
  
Did she plan for you to be a writer? Evelyn came right back.  
  
No. _I_ didn't even plan it.  
  
Then I think you know the answer to that question. Do you remember how she used to time our study breaks during exams?  
  
How could I... Something barely stirred in his subconscious, a long-buried... suspicion, associated somehow with his sister and this word. Odd. But he said it anyway.   
  
And maybe she felt it too, because he next asked, How's Stephen doing?  
  
More hesitation. More careful construction of normalcy. More _lies_. He's fine. Is Melissa excited about starting high school?  
  
Evelyn grimaced. It would ruin her image to be excited. She's very big on _image_... you saw what she was wearing.  
  
He had, but had been unable to believe it. His niece, whom he remembered when she was still playing with her dollhouse in a corner of the room while the grownups talked, had arrived dressed like a cross between and vampire and an ad for motorcycle gear. You actually let her...  
  
She got dressed at the last minute, so none of us could really do anything about it. We were late already. She shook her head. Honestly, sometimes I can't begin to understand why our kids get it into their heads to do what they do.  
  
He followed her across the kitchen and peered over her shoulder into the refrigerator. There isn't any Jell-O in here.  
  
My mistake.  
  
_I can't begin to understand why our kids get it into their heads to do what they do._ As they walked back into the living room to rejoin the rest of the family, Darren couldn't help but think, _Sometimes I can't understand the things we do about it, either._   
  
A/N: Lorna Dane, a.k.a. Polaris, was Alex's girlfriend in the comics. I also mentioned her in _Bright Darkness_.  
  
Yes, I did see Dark Horizons. For the sake of not boring you to tears, my opinion of the episode can be summed up in four words: What were they _thinking_?  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	39. Terms of Surrender

Chapter 38: Terms of Surrender  
  
_I had a really good time on Saturday, Dani murmured.  
  
So did I. Doug maneuvered his arm around her waist. There's more where that came from, right?  
  
I can't wait.  
  
Was she just talking about the prom? Or was it the promise of devotion all summer and beyond? Did it matter? Come on, let's try and get to the cafeteria before the rush. We can find a nice private place to sit --  
  
Doug, wait up!  
  
He didn't even need to turn around to identify the speaker, but Dani's beautifully curved eyebrows drew together. Who's that?  
  
Just my friend's little sister. I don't know what she wants.  
  
By now, his friend's little sister had caught up with them.   
  
Dani smiled at her. You're a freshman, right?  
  
the younger girl said rather impatiently. Doug, do you think I could talk to you for just a second?  
  
We're kind of late, Tara, so --  
  
It's Tanya. Sorry, don't you guys have lunch?  
  
Ignoring his girlfriend's miffed look (_How does _she_ know _our_ schedule?_), Doug told her, You go ahead. Save us a table. With a disarming grin, Somewhere in a corner. Out of the way.  
  
She blushed, nodded, and slipped out of his one-armed embrace.  
  
He didn't even realize where he was going until Tanya had led him into an empty classroom. Why --  
  
Just like yesterday. I didn't want anyone to hear. She leaned against the door. So that's her, huh?  
  
You know who she is.  
  
I always thought you'd go for the cute and bouncy cheerleader type.  
  
Tanya, _you're_ a cheerleader.  
  
Were. Was, she conceded.   
  
So what's this about? But he had a feeling he already knew.   
  
Larry came back last night.  
  
There it was.I know. I saw him in homeroom.  
  
She straightened up, alert, aware, almost instantly on guard. Against what? What did he say?  
  
Nothing. Announcements kind of came on before we could really talk to each other.  
  
I just... she began. I just kind of needed to say... She composed herself. I just wanted to ask you a favor. Her voice had taken on a soft, almost emotionless tone that scared him as much as any of the homo-sapien-power rants he'd heard on the news, or his mother's threats last Friday on the front porch. Maybe more.  
  
He stopped himself just in time from saying, _Anything_. Yeah, he'd tried to comfort her yesterday, but it had just been as a friend, and he hadn't really been sure what to say. But that had been okay, it had been fine, because she clearly hadn't had a clue either. Probably none of those magazines she always read gave advice on how to deal with this kind of thing. It made it a little easier to express what he'd been thinking since that night... then to go home and not think about it at all for the rest of the afternoon... the evening... and into the night. He had thought about what color corsage he should buy for Dani, about what a good idea it had been to sign up for an extra language course for next year, about baseball and how to beat his last Zelda score, and how stupid his parents were for worrying about whether Helen would ever find the perfect man. He'd thought about other things for an hour after he'd finally gone to bed, counted sheep when the Well of Other things went dry, and when he still couldn't sleep, tried to make some headway with Warlock. If only he could program it to say something besides Greetings... self... friend.. in hiccuppy monotone.  
  
No headway had been made, so he'd turned on the Sci-Fi Channel in the basement and watched whatever late-night movie came on next. _Starship Troopers._ Big bugs. Thinly veiled social commentary. The I-Love-You Diss.   
  
Don't talk to him about it.  
  
Now he was totally floored all over again. What? Why not?  
  
Just trust me. There was one emotion there after all: defeat. You don't want any part of this.  
  
Her words, the way she was saying them, even the way she kept one eye on the door -- it was all on the verge of seriously grinding Doug's nerves. Well, what if I want to help? he asked her.  
  
For a second, her face was no longer calm and resigned, but alive with an indescribable fear. Then it relaxed again. Don't try to help us. Don't mention it to him. Don't even _hint_ at it. Just pretend nothing ever happened.  
  
Doug was utterly lost. Who told you to say that? Okay, that was dumb.  
  
  
  
he said, more harshly than he'd meant to or even anticipated. Something's going on here. Any idiot could see that. Even me. He hoped, didn't really expect, that she would laugh at that, but her face remained stony. You told me to stay away before. Maybe you thought you could fix it yourself, but --  
  
Why don't you listen to me? Still no anger, just exasperation. _It's been fixed_. But her chin was starting to quiver. The stone was cracking. Only hours after she'd resolved to get on with her normal life, here she was on the edge of breaking down in front of that skinny little freak Doug Ramsey.  
  
Who took a tentative step to her side and patted her shoulder even more clumsily. She jerked away. Hey, Tanya, don't -- He tried taking her arm, not sure what he really intended to do -- keep her from leaving and letting people see her like this, maybe -- and she twisted out of his grip easily.   
  
Don't Hey, Tanya, don't' me. I'm fine. I'll get over it.  
  
I know. He'd never had any doubt about that.  
  
Just trust me. Please. Don't tell him. _I don't want to drag you down with us_, she seemed to say.  
  
  
  
But you're not going to stay away, are you?  
  
  
  
She nodded and slipped out the door.  
  
The second bell rang, but he barely heard it._  
  
**  
  
_Angelina had reluctantly put the strange phone conversation out of her mind and done her best to start the week off on the right note, so to speak. Nothing like a last-minute meeting with her guidance counselor on Tuesday afternnoon to bring things down. She'd sat and fidgeted and counted the leaves outside the window while Mr. Lewis asked one inane question after another. Was she planning on going to college? Yes, just not this year. Did she have a safety net in California? No, but she was working on it. Would she be taking this trip alone? She had thought about it, but she just wasn't sure anymore. Had she talked it over with her mother? There had been more screaming taking place than talking, but technically yes.  
  
In the end, Mr. Lewis had sighed and said that her grades were passable and she was very ambitious, but the opportunities that existed now might not be there next year. She had replied that if that was the truth, she would just have to look for some different ones, wouldn't she?  
  
He had sighed again.  
  
_So I'm not paying attention to reality_, she thought. _What else is new?_  
  
Then there had been the usual questions. Was there anything going on at home? Yes, too much. That she wanted to talk about? No, not in particular.  
  
She had never been so glad to avoid getting any more guidance.  
  
Someone rapped at her door. Who is it?  
  
Phoebe called. Can I come in? There was a note of urgency in her voice that Angelina identified, even recognized a little bit. How could she not recognize it? With Phoebe, sometimes it seemed like everything was a matter of urgency.  
  
Sure. What's up?  
  
The glow from her first -- and, she claimed, last -- theatrical experience had faded from Phoebe's face, and she looked as troubled as she'd sounded. How often had she stood in this doorway with that same expression, needing advice on a paper, an audience for a new song (so far, Angelina had been the _only_ audience), someone to whom she could relate her latest romantic crisis? _Funny that I was just thinking about plans for next year. Ours are completely different, and pretty soon we won't have this anymore, maybe ever again. Or at least not in the same way._ The question that came next -- When's the last time you heard from Larry? -- snapped her out of her musings.  
  
Not that she thought anything of it. Not at first. Couple of nights ago.  
  
What did he say? a new voice asked. Stephen had entered the room without a sound or a warning.  
  
That he'd had fun seeing me over the weekend. Okay, that hadn't been all of it, but the part that had literally kept her awake that night -- what he _hadn't_ said -- was really none of their business.  
  
Phoebe made a go-on motion with her hand.  
  
And that's pretty much it. Why?  
  
Stephen seems to think that something might have happened to him.  
  
I can speak for myself. Stephen's eyes traveled to a point on the opposite wall, as if he were trying to think of how to begin. Do you remember hearing about my friend Kurt?  
  
_Oh, so that's what it's about._ Angelina had only some idea of what That Place was like. Phoebe had explain a little of it to her, most of which had sounded way too fantastical to have happened to someone they knew. And if that was what she'd been told, what about everything else? _I don't want to know about it, I don't want to hear about it!_ she thought suddenly. Where had _that_ come from? Nothing had even been said yet. I think so.  
  
He emailed me yesterday, and said that Larry ended up at the Xavier Institute after he left here. He paused as if to let that sink in. He was talking to Rogue, it sounds like, when he was hit with a premonition -- a pretty bad one, I guess, because Jean had to use her powers to knock him out.  
  
Angelina exclaimed.  
  
She didn't hurt him. But now Stephen looked more uncomfortable than ever, as he described how Kurt had been called in to transport Larry out of the room for further examination. None of them knew what was going on, really, or why he was there, or why he walked outside a couple hours later like a zombie -- that's how Kurt described it -- and left without talking to anyone else except Xavier. Who wouldn't talk about it, he added, making a face.  
  
Like a zombie, Angelina repeated, a little dazed. Some small part of her was trying to shout that that could mean nothing good, but the rest of her seemed to be insisting that this was all happening to someone else, nobody she had ever heard of before. All this talk about visions and zombies belonged in one of Anita Blake's adventures. Or a mystery novel, one where nothing was what it seemed and the answers were right there in front of you, if only you had the patience, the open-mindedness -- and the courage -- to look at things in a different way.  
  
Tell the truth. Stephen was speaking in a patient yet persuasive voice that Angelina had never heard him use before, and that she didn't much like. No, wait. She didn't like it at all. Did he say anything that you thought was kind of weird?  
  
The clues were right there in front of her. The motive, the evidence. The pattern of dots that she couldn't quite connect. I got back from Isobel's yesterday, and... and he was gone. She cast her mind back, seizing on the one detail that had at first refused to leave her alone. I didn't know he was leaving until after. I guess he thought I did.  
  
Go on.  
  
I asked if someone was listening in, and he acted... _Stop, this is stupid._ ...like it was the most ridiculous thing he'd _ever_... And then she did stop, not faced anymore with an impossible puzzle, but with an answer that was just barely out of sight. Just barely. What happened to him? They were entering uncharted waters here, possibilities that just didn't make sense in real life.  
  
Of course, in life, people couldn't read minds or see into the future, either.  
  
Part of the problem, Angelina realized, was that she'd believed in psychics long before she knew what the X-gene might be. That was what had helped her not to panic. That was part of what had made her feel... sorry for him, for everything he was going through, she knew that, but not the least bit scared... not in that way, anyhow. It was the rest of the story that made her want to step aside.   
  
Say you'd asked him how he planned to deal with his powers, Stephen was saying.  
  
She should have known.  
  
She should have _listened_.  
  
Oh, my God, Phoebe whispered. She had guessed first.  
  
He wouldn't know what you were talking about -- he looked like he didn't have a clue how to say it, and would it really be worth the effort it took? -- because someone did something to, um, _keep_ him from knowing about it.  
  
They did what? Not that she didn't understand. _He's lying. Has to be. It's part of some kind of sick joke._  
  
You heard me. Still as gentle as possible, as if he were a specialist delivering the disastrous diagnosis to someone who'd been showing symptoms of cancer. I'm sorry.  
  
They... they did what? she demanded, aware that she was now on her feet. It _had_ to be a joke. Or a mistake.  
  
  
  
She _hated_ the way he was saying her name.  
  
...I had nothing to do with it.  
  
_I don't care.  
_  
I feel horrible about it, though.  
  
Why would he feel... oh. _Oh_. The question of how the hell Larry had heard about that place to begin with had been answered before she'd even really thought to ask it.  
  
He still remembers _you_.   
  
Like that was supposed to help. That doesn't matter, she said, fighting to keep her voice under control.   
  
And no, I wasn't the one who told him about it. But I knew what he had in mind, and I didn't try to stop him.  
  
You could have at least told me. She stared at him, then at Phoebe, who stood silently by his side, not looking incredibly happy about the news, but not looking incredibly anything else, either. Curly hair, sweet face, trendy-but-distinctive outfit. The perfect non-super-powered sidekick. In her twin's eyes, so like her own, Angelina saw devotion and guilt and, for the first time possibly ever, something like pity. You could have told me you talked to him, she clarified, that Xavier --whoever he even _is_, besides someone who supports mutants and talks about them at debates -- that he was involved.   
  
You can be angry at me, okay? Stephen sounded irritated, more like his old self now, but she didn't care. I didn't handle it right.  
  
That was the clincher. she snapped back. Good Goddess, how can you be so... She groped for a word, in the end coming up with the last one she would have ever expected to associate with the boy who had once used angel and devil sock-puppets to demonstrate idealism vs. pragmatism in _Slaughterhouse-Five_. So _arrogant_... damn it, this isn't _about_ you. It's not about you _handling_ things, so stop trying to play the tragic hero, will you? She turned on Phoebe. You had the past few days to tell me, you know that, right?  
  
Stephen didn't think we needed to.  
  
Had they dropped into Bizarro World? Angelina resisted the overwhelming urge to grab Phoebe by the shoulders and shake her until her earrings fell out and her head was spinning. _Stephen says, Stephen thinks_ -- She was hardly aware of what she was saying, where it was all coming from, or how exactly she had blown up like this. How she had let herself. Remember who was the first person you came crying to about him? Remember? And if I knew that something had happened to him, if I knew _anything_, I would tell you. No matter what I thought... don't you have a mind of your own anymore? She could tell she'd struck a nerve there. All the confusion, all the fear, the feeling of being left out that had built up and up over the past year... she'd been a fool to think she could keep it inside forever. A fool to even try. _The fall before last, you lost the person that mattered most to you in the world. Well, so did I. I lost _you_. I just didn't know it then. And you wouldn't tell me all that you'd been through, wouldn't tell me why you really had that fight with him -- you were tired of worrying about what other people would think, yeah right -- and you wouldn't tell me what the big deal is about Xavier. That information wasn't for the likes of an innocent bystander like me._ Okay, she could deal with all that, it wasn't really up to her whether it was her business or not. But this was different. So it's okay that the only guy I've ever been totally crazy about gets his _memory_ erased --  
  
There was nothing you could do, I know that, and it's _not_ okay -- Phoebe's eyes were glittering with tears.  
  
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Molten rage seemed to replace the blood in her veins and every thought in her head. It's not okay, but it's just another obstacle you have to deal with in your little star-crossed love story! She really was shouting now, of course. Get out. Both of you. Out. Now.  
  
They obeyed her.   
  
She was scaring them. Good. Perfect. Not that she wasn't scared herself. Far from it. Not for herself, any more than she was pounding her fists against the closed door in loneliness rather than anger. Being alone wasn't only what she preferred, it was necessary. And it provided plenty of time for thinking, time she didn't need. That is, once she'd stopped swearing eternal doom and torture on her sister, on Stephen, on Larry for chickening out and his -- _what did I call him? Oh yeah _-- psycho-wank father for pushing him into it, and most of all on Xavier, whose name had always inspired so much unexplained terror in all of them.   
  
_I might start talking to her again if she wants to explain herself at some point, but as for him... no. No way. I put up with it once, because I thought it was okay that they were a little crazy. Because they were in love. No more._   
  
She had thought that she didn't understand it because it hadn't happened to her yet... and then, of course, it _had_ happened. Happened so slowly and subtly, with none of the fireworks she'd expected.   
  
_Forever yours_, he'd signed the note, but she'd known how untrue that was. She had never met anyone in her entire life who deserved more to belong to himself. So what if he was the son of a genocidal fanatic? No matter how vocal he was about how much he hated it, no matter how obvious it was that it was still very much a part of who he was, no matter how much she'd wanted him to reconcile those two unavoidable facts so he could just let it _go_... she had always stepped back whenever he'd re-entered the conflict. Not because she wasn't up to the challenge, not because she wouldn't defend him from hell itself, but because she had been in enough minor battles to know which ones belonged to whom. And the ones fought on the battleground of his family had been his, part of his continuing search for a way to be more Larry and less Trask.  
  
_But when we were together, I could tell that he was already there, whether it sounded like it or not, whether he even _knew_ it or not. I thought he would figure it out eventually._  
  
She couldn't remember the last time she'd had so much faith in someone. It had scared her. It still did. But the rest, the way _she_ felt when they were together, had been worth the fear.  
  
She'd thought.  
  
_Do I even know him at all?  
_  
Maybe not, but she'd thought she'd have all the time in the world to find out. And now she just wasn't sure anymore. Whether she would like what she saw. Whether she would be able to keep her mouth shut. And most of all, whether she would ever be able to look at him again and see him for who he was: no longer a man of mystery, not a tabloid icon, but a funny, assertive, completely unpretentious boy who had known how to light her fire, then keep it from blazing out of control.   
  
Whether he could _be_ that person.  
  
And no matter what he'd wanted in the end, even if it was the only way he could have been saved, even if it was what was best for everyone, she knew she couldn't forget so easily. Not only had her life suddenly stopped making sense in a single weekend, but the secret resentment, fear, and -- well, yeah -- _jealousy_ that she'd felt in Phoebe's direction for the past year and then some... well, it sure as hell wasn't secret anymore.  
  
Even if she could have taken her words back, she wouldn't have.  
  
They wouldn't have been any less true. It wouldn't have solved anything.  
  
And maybe they had needed to be said.  
  
Maybe.  
  
**  
  
Phoebe stared at the door for a long time after it had finally slammed in her face. Maybe she was right, she said in a low voice.  
  
Stephen didn't look convinced. She's just upset.  
  
I didn't say she wasn't _upset_. I said that maybe she had a _point_.  
  
  
  
What do you want _me_ to say? she challenged. That it's not your fault?  
  
I _know_ it's not my fault. Larry didn't want to be the way he was. Just like Isobel. Just like almost everyone. I can't blame myself for that. I'm _not_ doing the tragic-hero thing.   
  
I never said you were, and I don't think that was what she was right about.   
  
Do you think she's right about you?  
  
Yes... I mean no... She started over. I don't know.  
  
Are you going to try to talk to her? You are, aren't you? He turned toward the stairs. Good luck trying to get her to make sense. I have to go.  
  
Talk about adding insult to injury. I_f this turns into another fight_, she thought as she watched him leave, _would I deserve it?  
_  
The slam of the door was closely followed by her mother's voice. Phoebe, is Stephen gone?  
  
_At least she's saying his name. _  
  
Come set the table, then.  
  
Phoebe sighed and shifted mental gears. Downstairs, as the opened the cabinet over the sink, Three plates or four?  
  
Leon's working tonight. Three. Joanne made as if to open the oven, then straightened. Or two, if your sister is going to be in her room all evening, like she usually is after one of these... tantrums. Do you have any idea what's wrong with her?  
  
Does it matter? Phoebe replied, dodging the question.  
  
I suppose not. Between the two of you, you can make everything into a crisis, can't you? The words weren't spoken as a condemnation, though, and there was genuine humor in her voice.  
  
She's a teenager. Phoebe tried to match the light tone, knowing that she wouldn't hear it often, but she couldn't quite manage. It's her right.   
  
I want to know, though. Did that road-trip plan fall through?  
  
  
  
Then you do know what it is. Carry them with two hands.   
  
Phoebe set the plates on the table with a trio of louder-than-necessary _plunks_, hiding a smile at the familiar command. Amusement was usually hidden between the three of them, always had been, for fear of it being taken the wrong way.  
  
School trouble? Her grades are good, and she already invited him to graduation, so it's not that.  
  
You and Leon are on my list, Phoebe assured her. We flipped a coin.  
  
Did you? So it's not school trouble. This time she really did look in the oven. The chicken -- if that was indeed what it was -- needed another three minutes. Boy trouble, then? I thought he showed up suddenly.  
  
Phoebe knew what that meant to Joanne, who had given the seal of approval only in the sense that he was allowed in their house and that she had decided he probably wasn't an undercover spy or a familiar face from _America's Most Wanted_. Maybe Angelina was interested in someone else, maybe Larry had gotten another girlfriend, or been forbidden contact with the one he did have for some dark reason. He did show up suddenly. All normal things, because she couldn't deal with the not-so-normal over again. And as not-so-normal went, this pretty much took the cake. _She's in a good mood tonight, besides the undercover slams, which I'm used to._ He's having trouble at home, and she's worried about him, she said truthfully enough. I don't want to tell you anymore.  
  
Do you think she will? Joanne raised her voice. Angelina! Dinner! Then, Oh, no. Forgot. Could you maybe toss us a salad, too?  
  
Um, sure.  
  
If she's not down in -- let's say, ten minutes -- we'll eat without her. All right? It was. She plans on staying with him, right? And driving across the country together? Simon's all for it, I don't even need to talk to either of them to know that. He's paying half the college expenses, he's part of the decision, but he's still a pushover...  
  
Phoebe let her rant for maybe two of those minutes, adding bits of the last half tomato to the salad bowl, then cut her off. I don't know what her plans are.  
  
Well, you obviously know something. Joanne removed the tray of what was _definitely_ baked chicken from the oven and set it on the counter. Phoebe, dear?  
  
  
  
You would tell me if your sister is involved in _anything_ that would get her in trouble, wouldn't you?  
  
Again, it was way too easy to figure out what Joanne meant, and again, the possibilities were at once safer and more extreme than the truth. Would _this_ get her in trouble? Hard to say for sure, now. It depended on whether Angelina let it go or -- this almost caused her to drop the salad bowl on the floor -- decided not to let Xavier get away with what he'd done. Phoebe wasn't sure what was more frightening: trying to imagine how that would turn out or how she might explain it to their mother. Which she still was, even if it had been decided long ago that her flakiness and emotional distance would eventually fix themselves, or maybe weren't worth fixing. One way or another, and even if the question had caught her off guard, Phoebe didn't even stop to think any more before saying honestly, Of course._ One way or another, it just keeps coming back to what she thinks. _   
  
_No. Wrong. False. Everything keeps coming back to Xavier -- what he did, what he might do, how we're going to keep from letting him haunt us -- and no matter what she said, no matter what she's feeling, I don't want Angel to get involved in that. I want him to stop being a good enough reason to do _anything_._  
  
**  
  
_Reflect on these past four years and what they've meant to you. Be as introspective as you want. That's what this assignment is for.  
_  
Except none of the introspection had made it onto paper yet, and as he walked home under a slowly darkening spring sky, he doubted it would at this point.  
  
Mr. Caisson and Mrs. Germaine had approached him within a few days of each other, both with the same request. Then, Stephen hadn't been totally sure whether to feel flattered that they were inviting him specially to make a speech at his graduation, angry because it was all too obvious why they were asking, panicked because he hadn't written anything worth the paper it was scribbled on since tenth grade. And what he'd told Kurt had been true. He wasn't a public speaker, didn't have anything inspiring or motivational to say about mutant rights. That was stupid. Ridiculous. The last few days had been a nice juicy reminder that he was just a kid coming to a fabled crossroads with more than his share of screwups. And it had been all he could do to say I'll think about it instead of laughing in their faces with a remark about who did they think he was, anyway?  
  
Like that was funny.  
  
The sky was darkening to purple, a summer breeze riffling the thick leaves on the oak trees that gave her street its name, and their crazy neighbor's lawn mower was rumbling a few yards over. Even if it had been full dark, no streetlights, no nothing, Stephen would have been able to navigate the streets and sidewalks. He had spent way too much time making his way in either direction -- walking as he was now, riding his bike, occasionally driving if he and Phoebe had a date in town. Or else, especially throughout middle school after his mother and hers had become such close friends, sitting next to Violet in the backseat of the family car on weekend nights. We're going to have dinner with Joanne and the girls. The girls, they had been then. The twins. Not because he couldn't tell them apart -- Angelina had preferred tightrope-walking contests on the back fence to watching movies while the grownups talked; a risk taker, even then -- but because... because...  
  
...because they'd been inseparable. Finishing each other's sentences. Committed to each other.  
  
So he wasn't angry that Phoebe had sided with her. He hadn't expected it, but it was understandable. Or at being called arrogant -- he'd been called worse. Maybe not so thrilled that she'd thought he had anything to do with her sister's unhappiness.  
  
Even if it was true.  
  
But not really.  
  
Sort of.  
  
He knew this, had never stopped knowing it, but not enough to try and end things this time around, and hoped she felt the same way. He needed Kurt and the others, but not enough to run to them. And he was angry at himself, yes, still, but not enough to assume that it was for the reasons she'd said.  
  
Or that it meant the things she'd said it did.  
  
Did it?  
  
Angelina had accused Phoebe of devoting herself to him at the expense of everything else, but if she hadn't known her sister well enough to notice when Angel's warm laughter and saucy step were a lie, she might never have come to him and said that maybe they should spill the beans.  
  
Not about Larry seeking the X-Men out. But that they'd talked to him and been honest about the possibilities... yeah, they could mention that. There wouldn't be any harm in that. No, no, no harm at all. She hadn't known what it led to, and Stephen had still been deciding whether to keep it between him, Kurt, and anyone else who'd gotten mixed up in it. (_Mutants only_, he thought with amusement and horror.) _For all I knew, he was on the wrong end of a mind-scan that left him a little tranced out._ Believing anything else would just be... well... paranoid. And needlessly anti-Xavier. And it would just confuse everyone more.   
  
And he didn't hold himself responsible, not really. But he admitted to messing up by not realizing, when he read the other boy's mind the night of the play and learned the whole story without being told, that if Larry discovered a way out, a way to be normal again, he would take it.  
  
_All cases are different. I should have remembered that._  
  
Or had his mistake been seeing them as instead of people with lives and pasts and plans that were different from his own?  
  
_There's this huge injustice that's been done to _you_. _Your_ world came crashing down. Everyone should feel sorry for _you_...  
  
_Why did he have to think of that fight?   
  
Why didn't he have any doubts what his own angry words meant now?  
  
He had reached the house by now, and every window was lighted. If anyone had looked out any of them, they would have seen him standing on the twilit front walk, eyes narrowed in concentration, not sure exactly why he was doing this. Not to read their thoughts, no way, just to know where they were, _that_ they were, that their lives were going on at last. His mother was on the phone with the principal of a grade school in Princeton, New Jersey, trying to set up an interview for over the summer. His father was helping Violet with her history homework -- she had a project on the Industrial Revolution due the day after tomorrow. Posterboard and captioned pictures printed off the computer. The glue-stick smell in the air. They wouldn't be in this house much longer -- the moving day was still being debated, but it looked like sometime at the end of August, and she had been making fanciful and impossible plans for how to spend her last summer with her friends -- but they were there now.  
  
_The journey to understanding is unique for each of us.  
_  
Standing in the darkness, staring into the light, he had never wanted so much to be able to start over.  
  
_A/N: Yes, the angst is almost unbearable. Remember that we're on the home stretch here. And yes, that last scene is meant to echo the chapter in POM where Larry reflects while he's out running at night. He and Stevie are foils for each other, just like Angelina and Phoebe.  



	40. Moment of Truth

Chapter 39: Moment of Truth  
  
Xavier followed his extraordinary invitation with a suggestion that the new arrivals take some time to think about what he was asking. Alex and Lorna stayed inside with Scott, but the others drifted outside to walk the all-too-familiar grounds.  
  
Kurt remembered an offhand, sarcastic remark that a long stint of punishment had once provoked in him. _Who wouldn't want to be an X-Man?_ he'd grumbled. _It's _so_ fulfilling._  
  
His distaste had been all surface -- even at his deepest, blackest moments of doubt, when losses and sacrifices and the sheer pointlessness of life as a vigilante superhero tested his faith so profoundly that he knew he couldn't turn to anyone else, he knew his decision had been the right one. You couldn't, after all, spell without . Fighting the good fight had filled the holes left in his life by his mother, Rogue, Evan, and nearly Amanda, and by the widening gulf between himself and his parents in Germany. Even with the questions that had arisen in his mind the last time he'd spoken to her, and the ones that had ached in the air between them, had never quite been resolved, he knew that she was the only one who would possibly understand that he wouldn't be able to stand losing one more person.  
  
Stephen was one of his best friends, but Kurt had always been reluctant to share his losses with someone who hadn't experienced nearly so many. It wasn't pride, not quite resentment. And it was affected somewhat by the knowledge that Stephen would have plenty of sacrifices to make if he stayed.  
  
Why didn't he tell us?  
  
Would you still have come if you had known? Kurt countered.  
  
  
  
And now zat you do...  
  
I still don't want to stay. My life is out there.  
  
Out zere with _them_? The elf gestured in the general direction of the gates as if they were about to burst open under the pressure of nonexistent anti-mutant agitators. Instead of answering, Stephen lifted his head suddenly as if sensing something in the air. Vat is it?  
  
Stop talking. Just stop. I hear something.  
  
Kurt listening. Birds were singing. The voices of the students were carrying across the lawn. I hear nothing, he said, perplexed.  
  
Not something out there. Something in my head.  
  
**  
  
Violet had thought her turn in the hot seat had passed. She'd confirmed that, yes, she was entering what her grandmother called Grade Eleven; she hadn't really started looking at colleges; and planned to try a whole bunch of different subjects before she decided what she actually wanted to do with her life. I was thinking about being the person that takes pictures of giant pumpkins and human pincushions for Guinness, she said, having in previous conversations aspired to be a limousine driver for the stars and a deep-sea diver in the Indian Ocean.   
  
Uncle Eugene simpered Isn't that cute? Next to her, Teresa patted her arm. Aunt Evelyn cast a cold fish eye in their direction before she and her husband started taking turns answering the questions her mother was asking Peter about the his own life, such as it was, at school. Violet was surprised anyone even noticed when she yawned for the third time. Not because she was particularly bored, but because...   
  
You were up late last night chatting with Everett, weren't you? Teresa asked, not bothering to lower her voice.  
  
Nevertheless, one of Peter's huge ears almost visibly swiveled in their direction, and he joined in with, Who's Everett? except his voice cracked on the second syllable.  
  
Yes, who _is_ Everett? Darren's fatherly suspicions had awakened with a mighty roar.  
  
He's just a guy Violet knows, Teresa said with one of her charming smiles.  
  
Someone from your school? Charity this time.  
  
Violet would never be sure what stopped her from intercepting her friend with a lie. Maybe it had been the actual conversation, which had started with an exchange of favorite movies and ended with her being told that their relationship was the truest thing he knew. Maybe it was that she was more tired of lies in this family than she was by a thousand late nights. And maybe it was a way to bring that to and end, full circle at last. she said. The hot seat again. I've seen him before, but we met for the first time in a chat room.  
  
And they've been talking on the Internet ever since, Teresa said helpfully.  
  
Violet Gertrude, do you know how dangerous that is?  
  
Of course --  
  
He could be a psychopath, Darren informed her. Or he could want... Suddenly remembering whose company he was in, Well, you know.  
  
Peter snickered.  
  
We'll talk about this later, Aunt Evelyn said firmly. Let's just all talk about this later --  
  
I heard about this girl -- Melissa spoke through shoe-polish-black lips -- who fell in love with a guy she met online, and they were talking for over a year. He invited her to his apartment, and he turned out to be this creepy old man and --  
  
Peter commented.  
  
He stabbed her thirty-seven times.  
  
  
  
Aunt Evelyn exclaimed.  
  
What? It's a true story.  
  
And you've been doing this since school ended? Charity was ignoring her niece. That's why you wouldn't leave the house?  
  
That's not healthy, Cousin Dana volunteered.  
  
Violet wasn't hearing any of the have-you-been's and you-shouldn't's and I-heard-about's and it's-just-like's, knowing they would only make her angrier. _What do they know,_ she found herself thinking, _what do any of them know, it's not _like_ anything except what it _is_..._  
  
But she wasn't even totally paying attention to those thoughts. Instead, she was looking over at Teresa, who in turn was looking guilty and confused. And scared.  
  
And who suddenly screamed, Leave her alone!  
  
Except it was more than a scream. It was a physical force that slammed against Violet's eardrums, sliced into her brain, and drove all angry/bitter/sad/wistful thoughts away. She covered her ears as though that might stop the pain. Dimly, she could perceive the other people around the table doing likewise. The glass in most of the picture frames shattered, as did several of the wineglasses. Violet's grandfather, Charity, and several cousins were splattered with liquid maroon droplets. Sections of the tablecloth were drenched.  
  
And then it was over.  
  
Teresa, eyes wide, hair actually disheveled from the sheer power of her shriek, pressed both hands to her mouth and knocked her chair over as she leapt up and ran for the door.  
  
**  
  
Jubilee and Kitty had walked up to the gazebo together, with Bobby, for once, following close behind. Being promoted from self-appointed leader of the New Mutants to a full-fledged, though younger and less experienced, X-Man had, oddly, done wonders for his humility.  
  
It was Saturday, so most of the students were also outside. Kitty spotted the two who had appeared for a second in the kitchen while she and Jean were talking. Josie gave a somewhat self-conscious wave, and she waved back.  
  
Bobby noticed. You met her? She really got a kick out of my code name.  
  
You're still using Iceman, right?  
  
She says she calls herself the Ice Queen or something as a screen name.  
  
Do you like being an X-Man? Kitty wanted to know. She didn't really need to ask -- she had, after all, participated in battle simulations with him -- but knew that they had to get back to the subject that was the reason for their being there.  
  
He doesn't like it, Jubilee said dryly. For the first few months, I don't think he would have taken off his uniform if it hadn't needed washing once in a while. And it just kept getting worse from there. Bobby seemed to be taking this cheerfully in stride, giving only an exasperated groan. What about you, Kitty? Are you happy _not_ being one?  
  
There was absolutely no question about that, and she made sure it showed. I've been writing a lot. Poetry. Some of it's been about this place and what I went through here. She hadn't expected that confession to come spilling out here, now, but as soon as she had, it seemed only right. She stared out at the shimmering water. So I guess I haven't been able to let it go. But that doesn't mean I think I made the wrong choice. She knew that Jubilee eventually wanted to live outside the mansion, but be on call, so to speak, when the team needed her. And... who was left? Oh, yes, she remembered what she'd wanted to ask. Did you ever find out whatever happened to Rogue?  
  
Jubilee's eyes flicked downward, and Bobby was as serious as any of them had ever seen him except in battle. We don't know.  
  
She's missing. Like... you know, like Evan. We never heard from her after the professor... after the whole thing that happened with Mystique.  
  
Kitty had never really asked Rogue why she had chosen not to save her adoptive mother -- as they'd later found out Mystique was -- when her powers had been used against her, had understood her roommate's motivations (as much as anyone possibly _could_ understand), but there was more to the question of than that.  
  
She was remembering things now that she didn't want to remember. Kurt had shut himself in his room that night, and Kitty had known better than to interrupt him. She had thought she'd heard his sobbing from all the way down the hall, but must have been imagining it, as she waited for Rogue's return from Xavier's office, where she was lectured, reminded of the effect her move was having on other students, but offered the option of staying at the school. Not a word had been spoken between the two girls, that night or the next morning. By the end of that day, the other side of the room had been stripped and cleaned. She never saw Rogue again.  
  
So what do you think? Bobby asked, bringing her back to the present. Are you staying now?  
  
_I should._ I don't want to.  
  
You should.  
  
I love seeing you all again, she explained. I missed you more than I thought I did. But...  
  
It's not for you, we know.  
  
_It's meant for me, and I for it.  
_  
We missed you, too, Jubilee said earnestly.  
  
I know. But escaping -- it's not _funny_ -- and making it on my own... all of that's too important. _Not as important._   
  
  
  
The bright sunlight was suddenly muted, as if seen through thick glass. The sounds around her seemed to roll off, those three words, _Not as important, not as important,_ repeating over and over again in her mind like a charm. A spell. _Not as important as staying. Helping. Fighting._ Someone was whispering in her ear. _Stay. Help. Fight for..._  
  
Had she been hearing this since her arrival, or had it just started now?  
  
_...for..  
_  
Now that she was voicing her doubts?  
  
...for us..  
  
She pressed a hand to her forehead. The other two were looking at her strangely, so strangely.  
  
_...for humanity...  
_  
And she recognized the voice now, God help her, beneath its careful disguise as her own thoughts.  
  
_Stay and fight for the dream.  
_  
**  
  
Full circle.  
_  
But I won't think about that night anymore. I know what happened, and I know what he did. Maybe I'll talk about it with him sometime. The other day, the first day, everyone was just as quiet. I think Xavier had known that would happen. I was on the couch, hugging a pillow, and I didn't even realize what it meant to be able to manipulate other people's thoughts, even though I would learn eventually. Damn straight I would. And I was still at the point where I thought grownups knew everything and they could solve everything, so I didn't know what to think when Mom and Daddy looked so terrified. And I wasn't sure why I didn't trust Xavier from the first second he told us what he was doing there. But if my parents could be shaken up, if they could look at him the way they looked at him even though they had loved him so much the day before, if they could be scared, then maybe grownups didn't have all the answers. And they were scared. For him? Of him? Did they know then? When did I decide that they were wrong, that Xavier was wrong, that nothing would ever really be _right_ again? It was such a long time ago, I don't even remember why I was crying, even though I hadn't done anything like that since._   
  
Bewilderment on her grandparents' faces. Dawning understanding on her parents'. Deep respect on Melissa's, excitement on Peter's, and stark terror on everyone else's.  
  
Violet herself was completely at a loss for words.  
  
It was Peter, of course, who broke the silence. She's a mutant. That's so _wild_!  
  
Be quiet, Aunt Evelyn instructed him. Darren, I think I ought to be warned before I bring my family into a house with one of _them_ in it.  
  
What were you thinking? Uncle Albert added.  
  
You'll have to ask Violet that.  
  
And they all turned, once more, in her direction. By then, though, she had not only found her voice, but was speaking in genuine shock. I didn't know. The memory of the pain in her ears and inside her head was still fresh, and she knew -- with a jarring certainty -- that Teresa would never cause that on purpose. (Would she?) I don't even think _she_ knew. There was no way she would have come here if she had. (Was there?)  
  
How do you know? Charity asked, giving voice to her daughter's fears. Honey, I know you two are close, but --  
  
She could have been planning this, another cousin surmised. You can't trust those freaks.  
  
Now Violet was shoving her own chair aside before she even realized what she was doing. Just like all those weeks ago. Just like. How could she make them understand what Teresa and Everett had given her? Something besides fear, that was for sure, no matter what anyone else thought. I have to go find her.  
  
You're not going anywhere. Aunt Evelyn had now seized control of the situation... or thought she had. Let her deal with herself.   
  
I can't do that. She was on the move, running again, but with a purpose this time. Hoping she wasn't too late. She hoped she was doing Phoebe proud. She faced them one more time. And she's not a freak.  
  
So what now? She was outside. Which direction should she go in? Should she run, take her bike, shout to the silent and peaceful street?  
  
Or do none of those things, and just gasp like a horror heroine when a hand touched her shoulder?  
  
Teresa's eyes were smeared with tear-blurred makeup, and she was still pressing her lips tightly together. All she seemed to be able to do was shake her head, over and over and over. It took a couple of minutes to even be able to whisper, I didn't know.  
  
I know you didn't. Violet searched the words she'd read and, after thinking about it, her own memories, for a way to respond to that, a way to help, a way to go from here. Somehow, You can be a mutant if you want to be, didn't seem quite right. Finally she managed to retrieve a single recurring remedy for the initial devastation. Let's walk. It'll help you not think about it.  
  
So they did, but Teresa, still not speaking above that same whisper, said, I don't want to not think about it. I thought about it every day even before I was sure, trying to prepare, but nobody's ever really sure. And even if we know _if_, we don't know _when_. She swallowed. Besides, I need to know what I want to do next.  
  
You're going to have to --  
  
the other girl rasped. I'm _aware_ of that.  
  
Oh, shit, she hadn't meant it that way. I was going to say, you have to tell your mom.  
  
No. No. Oh, Lord, no way. She doesn't think mutants are an abomination, nothing like that, but she won't understand.  
  
You have to, or she'll find out another way. No elaboration was necessary.  
  
Teresa let out her breath. I know that. What a mess, Vi. What a mess. _Oh_... She stamped her foot on the grass, remembering just in time not to shout out in frustration. But what next?  
  
I don't know about next. Was she crying, too? Yes, for the first time that she could remember, a couple of tears sliding out of each eye. That was all, but it was enough. Don't worry about that now.   
  
_Should I suggest it to her?   
_  
_Maybe_.   
  
_But I know what she'd say, I know what she'd think she wants.   
_  
It had been safe to give the information about Xavier to Ice, whom she hadn't known well, but she knew that her uneasiness during and after that decision was nothing, _nothing_, compared to what might happen if the safe way out was taken before they'd gotten a chance to see how the next couple of days went.  
  
You don't have to get involved, Teresa was saying.  
  
I already was, remember? Picking up the vibrations. It's stupid to think that we've ever been alone.  
  
Teresa raised her eyebrows and lowered her chin. You said   
  
I guess I did.  
  
Is that what you _meant_? No, never mind. What a _mess_, as if acknowledging once again what a mess it was would somehow clean it up. And then, softly, like saying it made it more real than it had been before, I'm a mutant. She turned to Violet for one last question. Are you... you're not scared of me?  
  
Violet shook her head. Not of _you_. Of this new power of hers, maybe, and then probably only until there became a difference again.  
  
Oh, my _Lord_. Still whispering, so it really sounded like a prayer. She wasn't crying, and didn't say anything else, just stood by the side of the road hugging herself and rocking back and forth, trying to draw strength, maybe, from the lack of motion. Strength to tell her mother, to tell her friends and eventually Brett, to tell the group when and _if_ she had better control, when and if she'd gotten to the maybe-it's-not-so-bad after all stage. Because there were no guarantees that she would. None at all.  
  
What else was there to say or do? Want me to walk you home? Like she didn't already know what the answer would be.  
  
No. Thank you. She swallowed again. I think I _need_ to be alone right now.  
  
**  
  
All his life, Stephen had heard at least one or two voices in his head, the voices of reason, or temptation, or occasionally both at once. Like now. Tempting him to do the reasonable thing. He was sick of playing by the rules of the outside world, wasn't he? He hated what prejudice and danger were doing to people like him, to Phoebe, to his family, right? He hated all these silly barriers, hated wondering what genetic crisis was going to hit the world next, hated _hiding_. That was what the voices reminded him of now.  
  
The words weren't raised above the mental level of a whisper, but were as intense and persistent as if they'd been shouted, and just as draining of any other thought. _Stay. Help. Fight for us, for humanity. Stay and fight for the dream._  
  
The last time he'd experienced anything like this had been at a meeting in Wallglass that he'd attended years ago with Scott, Ororo... and Xavier. He wished he could remember what that felt like, so he could identify it, so he'd _know_... Phoebe had been up there on the stage, so beautiful, so brave, and he'd fought so bitterly when his memories of her were in danger of being wiped out forever. It hadn't been like this, he knew that much, this could just as easily be mistaken for his own conscience if he hadn't known better. _Known better, I should have known better, should have..._  
  
The voice had quieted to a still-convincing but bearable murmur, and Kurt didn't seem to be hearing it at all.  
  
And the others?  
  
Now more than just half afraid of what would happen if he was noticed, he reached out slowly, carefully. Jubes? Bobby? Kitty? They were in the gazebo, the three of them, and two out of the three were ignorant of what was going on, but he found himself focusing on Kitty's mind, where unmistakable signature of Xavier's thoughts was embedded like a fly in amber. It's Stephen. Can you hear me?  
  
_Stay. Fight for us... no. Something's happening. They don't hear it. Someone's talking in my head, trying to... make me change my mind... I know how that sounds..._  
  
Well, it's true.  
  
_Is Xavier doing this?  
_  
I think so. Who else could it be?  
  
_Oh my God.  
_  
I know.  
  
_I thought about it before... I think we all did. I looked at the others, especially Scott, and I wondered... but I never really believed..._  
  
Don't worry about that now. Just get out!  
  
_But the others...  
_  
If you don't want it all to be for nothing, GET OUT!  
  
A little further.  
  
Inside.  
  
Alex and Lorna were off on similar trains of thought, but they were the only ones. _Of course. They came from the outside, didn't they?_ Jumping from mind to mind, especially out of practice like this, took a lot of concentration, and he was surprised that he'd even been able to draw that simple -- and probably obvious -- conclusion. He couldn't warn them, not without causing suspicion among the two telepaths already in the room, so he went for the source, searching for a crack in Xavier's always-formidable mental shields and striking with a long-unused bolt of psychic energy. As their minds met, time out of mind slipped through their fingers as sand from the beach. All things lost meaning except for the conflict. The combatants were as splotches of color on a black page  
  
Really, now. That won't be necessary.  
  
Cold satisfaction surrounded him, frigid air from an open window. Leave us alone. If we don't want to join, that's our business.  
  
I wonder what's more important: going about your business, or living up to your responsibilities?  
  
Maybe they'd join anyway if you stayed out of their heads, did you ever think of that?  
  
Quite possible, Xavier agreed. The option of staying, however, isn't supposed to occur to them unless they choose to leave.  
  
Stephen thought he might be sick. So you _programmed_ us?  
  
Shock in the purest, most original sense of the word, like an electric jolt that spun him away from the outside reality and into the indistinct shadow realm of their joined minds. I made a suggestion, Xavier amended, back to his teacher voice. With enough determination, their own free wills would prevail, if that's what they truly want. You speak of programming. Do you take me for one of the Trasks?  
  
_Please make me stop feeling what he's feeling, _please_, I don't think I can _stand_ it..._ If it hadn't been for you, it _would_ just be one of them.  
  
A faint hiss of exploding air, somewhere outside the darkness. Footsteps sounded on the hard ground, followed by voices. _A_ voice. What's wrong with him?  
  
Don't get yourself involved in things you don't understand!  
  
He was my friend. And you screwed with his mind. Just like you screwed with --  
  
With your precious Phoebe, Xavier finished. Yes, I've heard it all before. But this isn't the time to bring up old quarrels. While we're on the subject of looking into the future, what do you see in yours?  
  
Should I blast him?  
  
Not yet. I'll try freezing first.  
  
Both of you _stop_ it!  
  
Stephen did know what would happen next -- it was another of the oldest tricks in the proverbial book -- and braced himself for the influx of images, of possibilities. Expecting pictures of a life desperately on the run from death machines and torch-wielding lynch mobs, he was surprised yet again when the circumstances Xavier posed contained none of these. The undertones of prejudice were there, yes, but instead he saw himself growing old in the depths of the city, into menial work -- in a supermarket, perhaps, or pushing paper -- when even being a radio announcer was too high-profile, clinging to his past and his one pathetic claim to fame as an almost-superhero, clinging to the drama and excitement and terror that he didn't dare to feel again, even as he led an uneventful life below the radar of the authorities.  
  
Losing touch with his friends. With his family, who had never understood him, never would. And if he married Phoebe, the love of his life, what then? What would stop her from becoming drunk on the spotlight, actually seeking the glitz and attention from the media instead of scorning them? Abandoning her soul-rending lyrics and frills-free presentation in favor of whatever fast-pace, techno-jazzed, synthesized trappings were at the moment... or that she could be paid to adopt? Or becoming obsessed with staying gorgeous, staying hip, staying in the same place as That Fresh New Thing, as so many divas had before? Perhaps dumping him when he stopped being as good for her image as the resulting news story would be? And he would miss her, yes, but he would also be glad to be rid of her demands, of their epic love gone as flat and predictable as the plot of a dollar store paperback.  
  
_No, no..._  
  
Like the dark version of a guardian angel, showing the misdirected hero what his mundane life would be like if he chose to leave it behind, Xavier was presenting the dull and meaningless world that Stephen would have to live with if he chose to embrace his own. And you have, in the end, left the world unchanged, the professor taunted. If this new era is a dark one, you'll have known that you chose not to play a part in saving that. Except would that really be worse than _forgetting_ that you could have played a part?  
  
_No!_ Stephen tried to shake the cynical time-lapse pictures, but they stuck fast. He searched in the well of near-despair they had brought forth, for more ammunition, one last remnant of the attitude that had gotten him through the worst of his life as a freak. _Don't let him know he's gotten to you._ So now you're going to tell me I've got a _destiny_? Did you try this with Kitty, too?  
  
I'm confident that Kitty's illusion of forbidden love and triumph will fade on its own. I'm perfectly willing to offer her guidance if I feel she's in any more danger of slipping.  
  
Slipping... his youth and his dreams slipping away...  
  
And Alex is completely devoted to his brother, and Lorna, to Alex. I know all of you...  
  
Steve? Are you in there? Hel-_lo_, can you hear us?  
  
...and I know what's best for you... always...  
  
This choice wasn't anything new. A different road each time, and each time, he'd been sure, so sure, that he'd been choosing the right one. Safety the first time, freedom the second... or was it the other way around? Or were they mixed together in both?'  
  
Xavier was offering all of them something _better_ than both: acceptance, and the chance to make it possible for other people. People like Violet's group of friends, plagued by the worst fear that their generation had to deal with. People like the students he'd seen gathered in small clumps as if they were making a last stand. Ordinary people who hated and cowered and fought because they didn't know any better... or maybe because they did, and chose wrong.  
  
_His thoughts? No, mine, all mine. Because I do know what he's offering. I do know what he's asking. It's so tempting... and so _fulfilling_... but..._  
  
But the mundane world, the _human_ world, that had been painted for him, beckoned as well. And it called out with Phoebe's voice, as it called out to Kurt with Amanda's, to Kitty with Lance's, and to Jubes with everything she'd always been so sure was waiting for her.  
  
And it called out to all of them as the people they could be, if they made the decisions that were right for _them_.  
  
Stephen, stop fighting him. It's not worth it!  
  
There she was. She had found him just as he was preparing to strike some kind of cataclysmic final blow... he could almost _see_ her...  
  
... except it wasn't Phoebe, after all. It was Jubilee, free of her grudge after all, but who would have been his other half and his partner in crime if he'd stayed the first two times, and if the position hadn't already been filled.  
  
She's right. It's not.  
  
Kitty, too. What was she still doing here?  
  
Come back to us. That strange noise in the air, only partly heard, must have signalled Kurt's arrival.  
  
He _was_ their friend. And they were his. They had helped bring him to this point, but they weren't the only ones. He in the direction of Xavier's mental presence. Lay off them. A sharp slap, physical this time, across his face, brought the real world suddenly back into focus. But he was determined not to let go yet. If there was ever a time when he'd needed the last word, this was it. He hoped soon to be done with Charles Xavier once and for all, and wanted to make this count. I'm not afraid of you anymore, and if you ever hurt anyone I care about again, you'll find out how not afraid I am.  
  
Not bad.  
  
Not bad at all.  
  
And then the three faces, crowded close. Stephen was leaning against Kurt for support he hadn't even known that he needed. It's all you, he managed to say, and hoped that all explanations could come later.  
  
**  
  
shy_violet: So you know.  
  
Krackel: She called me last night.  
  
shy_violet: She promised to call ME this morning, tell me how things went with her mom. How'd she seem to you?  
  
Krackel: Scared out of her mind, what do you think?  
  
shy_violet: To me, too. It happened at lunch with my dad's family. Yeah, I know, ouch, right? They started making noises, and she ran out of the room. I ran after her. When I went back inside later, they were still eating and talking like nothing had happened. I thought someone had wiped their minds, seriously I did. I think the relatives left a little earlier than they'd planned to.  
  
Krackel: And what did your parents have to say?  
  
shy_violet: They're not angry, and they didn't forbid me to see her ever again. I kind of thought they would. Actually, most of their questions about you -- that was the argument that made her yell like she did.  
  
Krackel: Well, if they thought I was too dangerous, we wouldn't be having this conversation. :) Or would we?  
  
shy_violet: We wouldn't. Trust me on this one.  
  
Krackel: But?  
  
shy_violet: When I told them you went to Cramer, we sort of agreed that they should meet you as soon as school started up again. You ARE coming back, right?  
  
Krackel: Yeah. Planning to change the system from within, etc. Did the three of you talk about Stephen, too?  
  
shy_violet: I'm still going to have to be the one to take the fabled first step.  
  
Krackel: Do you think she's going to be okay? Teresa I mean?  
  
shy_violet: How should I know? I can't see the future.  
  
Krackel: But you can use the past. Rely on it.  
  
shy_violet: I don't know about that anymore.  
  
A/N: So there it is, in this chapter: the final battle between the hero (such as he is) and the villain.   
  
I did, as you now know, incorporate the bare bones of Rogue's actions in into the fic. Like so many other things herein -- such as Evan's fate -- when they occurred, and under what circumstances, are entirely up to you. Factual details are usually reader-interpreted in my fics, while the symbolism and Hidden Meanings could just as easily hit you over your heads with a sledgehammer. (Way too much about the power of lurve and friendship in this installment; _somebody_ needs to cut down on her Dean Koontz reading.) And I made Kitty a writer here because it just seemed to work in _Bright Darkness_. If nobody's watching closely, I might come up with my own version of Neva Canon, and _then_ where would we all be?  
  
This is not the end of Violet's story -- she'll show up in the epilogue, I promise. But it is the beginning and middle of the resolution. I hope that it's pleased you. Many thanks to Elrohir for the line about sand from the beach, which kicked off the psychic battle. Thought it might be nice if I took at least one of your ideas.   



	41. Search No More

Chapter 40: Search No More  
  
_The final journalism exam wasn't a test per se, a nice change from the true-false, multiple-choice, computer-scanned answer sheets in Angelina's other classes. They had to choose three of their pieces from this semester and use them as examples of how your skills have developed and why... or why not. She had experienced a long moment of blind panic at that -- hadn't most of her assignments been in that box of papers she'd thrown out weeks and weeks before? When she got home that afternoon, she'd found herself turning her room upside down, scattering books and papers, looking under her dresser (which she was sure contained a black hole to a nameless dimension) and in her closet (where she'd been afraid to enter for the past year). She'd uncovered the folder from last marking period as part of a teetering stack, a leaning tower, on her desk. Somewhere in the _middle_ of the leaning tower. Now, of course, the rest of it was scattered all over her rug, but what she'd managed to salvage was spread out on the coffee table. She lifted one, then the other, scrutinizing each, sometimes actually holding them up to the light like stained glass.  
  
Here was the interview she'd conducted with one of the new math teachers, who had spent the better part of her algebra classes telling the students why they would never have any use for geometry, _ever_. Here was the expository piece on the napkin shortage in the cafeteria -- Mr. Caisson had given them each a similarly boring topic; their challenge had been to experiment with technique and get used to the fact that they wouldn't always be uncovering major scandals in the real world. Here was the tabloid-style about a local masseuse who traced Satanic symbols on the skin of her clients. She'd done a lot better on that one.  
  
And here -- at the very bottom, naturally -- was her undercover story. She didn't want to reread it, tried to tell herself that she didn't need to -- it hadn't been an easy day to forget.  
  
She'd entered the lion's den, the inner sanctum of the Friends of Humanity, on an otherwise normal day in February, and had been anticipating everything except otherwise normal people. Flawed, prejudiced, and some unspeakably annoying in a way that made Angelina almost want to pray for the future of the human race if they were its last hope. But still people. They weren't evil, they'd just decided to believe the wrong thing. She had started from there, using details from the meeting -- though naming no names -- to try and illustrate what a foolish and misguided choice shared by so many people might do. She'd probably been the most surprised of all when the report had earned her an A. _I tried to be objective -- his favorite word after -- but I don't think that's possible in this case. With a few modifications, if I'd handed it back to him a couple weeks ago, do you think he would have taken it? I mean, it is the subject no one can get enough of._  
  
Probably not, and anyway, the senior essayist had already been picked. Angelina had no idea what he was going to say, and it wasn't like she could ask Phoebe, if she even knew.  
  
Speak of the devil. No, that wasn't fair. Her outburst nearly two weeks ago had been fair, had been real. These were feelings she kept in reserve, ready to let loose whenever anyone got in her way. Anybody here?  
  
Still, she acknowledged Phoebe's presence (back from work, from shopping, from wherever) without enthusiasm. The time that had passed since the fight hadn't exactly been an ice age, but it wasn't the only thing they were finding themselves less and less able to talk about. Had the fight caused that, or had Angelina been right the first time, and it would have happened anyway? It did make a scary kind of sense.  
  
Both of them had known that she wouldn't know what to make of what she'd taken to privately calling The Whole Story, all capital letters -- namely, who and what Xavier was and how he'd invaded their lives -- and it was true. She'd known what she thought of it at the time, though. She'd demanded to know why she was being told all this _now_, she didn't care _how_ it had happened, what was she expected to _do_?   
  
The sample article -- focusing more on style than on substance, format over content -- had been part of their first unit test, and was an obvious no-no. Then the napkin story, her lowest grade in that class ever, a possibility nevertheless. She couldn't say anything about the lunch ladies' endless bargaining with the delivery men, but could she say something about what she'd _said_ about it? Maybe. Huh. Nah. Stupid. The editorial about stress brought on by the CAPTs (death and destruction to all standardized testing) that she'd done for the school paper, after that...  
  
What are these? Phoebe picked up the editorial and skimmed it.  
  
Could you, um, not touch?  
  
Sorry. A little possessive?  
  
I'm not possessive. It hadn't been meant as snide or bitchy, but Angelina found herself rising to whatever challenge this might be. I just don't want you touching my stuff.  
  
Phoebe laughed softly. I'm not possessive -- don't touch my stuff!' she mimicked, but, again, there was no real mockery in it. I like that!  
  
It's just, I have to get all of this together and decide what I'm going to say about it by exam week. No different, now, from any other squabble they'd had in the past, except it was different.  
  
At length, Phoebe said again, I'm sorry.  
  
And I said it's okay.  
  
No. I didn't mean about that.  
  
Angelina kept a tight grip on the sheaf of papers just in time to keep herself from dropping them. I know.  
  
I've had a lot of time to think about it...  
  
she couldn't keep from asking.  
  
Phoebe's eyes seemed to darken, and she could have lost her temper then. Yes. Alone. Angel, you shouldn't let a relationship that went badly get you bent all out of shape. You're too good for that.  
  
Thanks, but... huh?  
  
You know, avoiding him like you've been.  
  
_And to repeat... huh? _I _haven't_ been avoiding him. Well, that actually depended on how you wanted to look at it. The next time he'd called, she'd hung up. She'd been ashamed of it later, but she hadn't even tried to figure out why, because it had been clear. I hate it. The situation he's in, that we're both in, I guess. And I obviously can't talk about what he... She fumbled. What he is? Was?  
  
Phoebe said gravely.  
  
But we talk, yeah. Three times now, in the space of less than two weeks, but shorter than they had used to stay on the phone, because the conversation from her end was still forced. Still awkward. She'd ended up bursting out with idiotic words that she'd already told him: that there was a ticket for her graduation with his name on it. His response had been so... so _Larry_ that she actually had been fooled for a second into believing that everything really was going to be all right.  
  
_They do that? Really?  
  
No, they don't really. You know what I mean. Coming?  
  
Are you kidding me?_  
  
And there had been nights, at first, when she'd wondered what he had been going through his head that day, whether he had been scared, whether he had actually wanted this, and whether there was, in fact, really only one way to _make_ everything all right. But she wouldn't speak of that. I refused to fall apart over it. The ice, and she thought it had been there a little after all, the ice was melting. That's not me at all. I'm not... She stopped short.  
  
But Phoebe understood. You're not me.  
  
No. Not at all. But that's... that's not a bad thing. I mean a good thing. I mean... do you know what I mean? _Stop this. Stop it _now_. _You were always the popular one... and the talented one... and Joanne's favorite... This was turning into such the Disney Channel special. Unbelievable. It's like you were always in this _bubble_. Absolutely terrible. And I guess it wasn't so much that I wanted to be in my own bubble, so nothing could hurt me, but I wanted to be in yours with you. And when Stephen came along... I couldn't be.   
  
And I got so wrapped up in working things out with him that I forgot that there were other people who cared... I was just this silly little ignorant normal... and I'm sorry.  
  
Angelina had never heard the word used as a noun before, and hoped that she wasn't going to hear it be made a habit of. Stop saying you're sorry, she instructed. I knew you were sorry. I am, too. That I hurt you. But I don't want to pretend it never happened, I don't want to pretend that weekend never happened, even though I... guess I'll have to. There, she'd said it. And that meant the rift would remain, always, between her and two of the people she loved most in the world. When she resolved to let it go, what did that mean? Persuading herself that it had all been some kind of crazy dream, which would obviously be best for all of them, but seemed, in some insane way, like a betrayal?   
  
Because you want to be with him, Phoebe stated.  
  
Pronouncements like that were still too dangerous. Not as dangerous as the Big Three Words that they had never actually voiced...  
  
_And remember that I love you no matter what.  
_  
...but still pretty bad. Instead, she made a compromise, settling for, Because we have a road trip to plan.  
  
**  
  
The last day of school was blisteringly hot, making the final few minutes almost unbearable. But finally, even those had passed, and students rush, poured, and actually pushed each other aside in their efforts to get out into the sunshine and freedom.  
  
Will you look at my grades! Lorraine wailed, brandishing her final report card. My parents are going to ground me for, like, ever!  
  
Nick, who had his arm twined around her waist, snuck a peek. Huh, you don't know what bad is.  
  
But _they_ think they do!  
  
So you didn't do so hot in Spanish or algebra. Vanessa was looking, too. There's always next year.  
  
They're going to send me to summer school. I heard them talking about it! Nickles, aren't _you_ worried?  
  
Huh? About you?  
  
_Nickles?_Tanya mouthed to Vanessa, who rolled her eyes.  
  
Lorraine gave her boyfriend a playful shove. No, dumbass. Aren't you worried about what your parents will say?  
  
Nick's forehead creased, as if he was having trouble putting together what _he_ was going to say. They don't really care as long as I don't interrupt their corporate tea parties. It wasn't abitter or falsely nonchalant statement, but he was about one step up from sounding like he was reading off cue-cards. At least Lorraine had the sense not to look completely taken in by it. Lori, honey, don't sweat it. You don't see your friends worrying, right?  
  
Well, Vanessa's super-smart -- what? It's true -- and Tanya's dad doesn't care about report cards and stuff.  
  
Huh. That must be so cool.  
  
He does _so_ care about report cards and... stuff, Doug, who had joined the throng, put in. Don't believe everything you hear. So what's everyone doing this summer? Lorraine sort of moaned. Okay, sorry I asked.  
  
Going on vacation for the next week or so, Vanessa replied, pushing open the heavy front doors. Colonial Williamsburg -- oooh, fun -- and Virginia Beach.  
  
Nick said glumly.  
  
Yeah, I should probably start doing some of that, Doug said with a funny look.  
  
  
  
Probably at one of the stores in Union Station, like Larry.  
  
Tanya clapped her hands. Now we'll have to annoy _both_ of you when we go shopping!  
  
Are you meeting him out by the parking lot?  
  
Yeah, he has to finish cleaning out his locker first. Which could actually take a while. If I were a good sister, I'd go see if I needed any help.   
  
Vanessa waved toward her bus. Okay, this is where I leave you guys. Tanya and Raina, I'll call you before I have to leave. She hugged them both and slipped on her sunglasses. Everyone else, have fun.  
  
Lorraine stared at her friend's retreating back, looking forlorn, and Nick put his arm around her again. They kissed slowly, right there, with floods of underclassmen -- and a few upperclassmen, too -- streaming past them.  
  
I think I actually might feel like doing a good deed after all, Tanya said with a significant glance at Doug.  
  
He stopped twitching uncomfortably. Yeah. Back inside?  
  
The rush was past, and there were only a few stragglers left in the halls. Another sad case, Doug said.  
  
You mean Lorraine? No, she's always been a little silly like that. Actually, all three of us have. Then the irony of his words hit her. You should talk!  
  
Dani and I broke up. You didn't know?  
  
She didn't stop and stare at him open-mouthed, but it was a close one. No, nobody told me. Have I been cut out of the gossip chain completely? _When_? _It wasn't because we danced together at the prom, right?_ she wanted to ask, but realized that would be stupid. Not that it hadn't been a relatively fun evening -- not exactly Starlight To Last Forever, but fun anyway. She'd spent that week a little afraid to spend too much time at home, but more afraid to leave it for reasons she couldn't name, and had fully planned to spend Prom Night alone. But she'd let herself be dragged out anyway, and didn't regret it one bit.  
  
When did it happen? Only a couple days back, actually. Yeah. She said I was sweet and -- I think quirky' was the word she used -- but not as much her type as she thought I was.  
  
So no summer of passion? They turned a corner.  
  
No summer of passion.  
  
I'm sorry.  
  
It's okay, for real, he said, and she could tell he meant it, and that was what she didn't exactly get. For practically the whole year, whenever she'd seen him, he'd been all and and Maybe guys didn't react to being dumped in the same way girls did? She thought about the ones she'd dated in junior high, how they'd always avoided her indefinitely afterward, and wondered if they were as close-mouthed in their own circles. If they even had any. So what are your plans?  
  
Just hang out, mostly. Kylie -- she was one of my friends from last winter -- she's coming to visit. I can't wait until she and Vanessa meet each other. They'll drive each other insane.  
  
What's she like?  
  
Like me. But flouncier.  
  
Doug said as if the thought had just struck him. You guys want to come to my house and meet Warlock?  
  
She still didn't stare, although she would have if she hadn't known what he was talking about. That's the computer you taught to talk, right?  
  
Right... oh. Now she could tell he'd averted his own eyes.   
  
She made herself reach out and touch his hand. It's okay. She'd been all prepared to say, _I've had enough of that for a while._ But it had _been_ a while. And his invitation was clearly not about talking computers at all. I think he knows that if he tries to get Larry to go all anti-mutant, I'm not going to stand for it. Meaning she would spill the beans, let the cat out of the bag, all those inane expressions, no matter what the risk. And I still can't forgive him for the stuff he said and did. But hating him... I need that energy for other things.   
  
They had really stopped now.  
  
And were still holding hands.  
  
Tanya took a deep breath. Speaking of flouncy, she said, trying to keep her knees from knocking together, wondering if it would look odd if she slapped herself or looked for hidden cameras to make sure they weren't living in a soap opera, now that you and Dani are history, I guess you're free to -- counting the tiles on the floor of the hallway, one, two, three, four -- start chasing the cheerleader type of your choice, right? She raised her eyes.  
  
Doug made kind of a strangled noise. I guess so, he said, and his voice wasn't hyper, but charged with energy of a completely different sort.  
  
She squeezed his hand. Come on. Let's make sure that none of the mold on Larry's stuff has come to life. What a way to ruin the mood.  
  
I'd like to see you try to explain that one when you get home.  
  
Please. We've always wanted a pet. They dropped each other's hands and turned the last corner.  
  
None of the mold had come to life yet, but the giant trash can was almost full to the top with crumpled papers and old notebooks. Where were you guys? Larry demanded.  
  
Talking to some people.  
  
Feeling archeological? He pointed at the still-half-crammed locker.  
  
She got down on her knees to inspect. Do we get to wear cool hats?   
  
Nah, and no conspiracies or mummies or mystical medallions, either. But the more people are working on it, the faster it'll get done and we can get _out_ of here.  
  
Amen to that, Tanya declared, and set to work.  
  
**  
  
Having no older siblings, the last graduation Stephen had been to was his own, from elementary school. Their class had been an explosion of different colored dresses and suits. This time it was a field of drab blue gowns in the first few rows of the auditorium. They had practiced for three afternoons straight, taken pains to line up in perfect height order, but even the rehearsals hadn't prepared him for how colossally tedious all of this was. The guest speaker, an astronaut who had been part of the first launch from Cape Citadel, clearly didn't want to be there, and was coping with her own boredom by sharing the wealth.  
  
Sitting on the stage with the salutatorian (Trish Markham), the valedictorian (Caleb Parks, who'd dyed his hair pink under his cap), and the other essayists, Stephen had a good view of the audience. Most of them he didn't know, of course, but he did spot Kurt, Amanda, and Margali in one of the back rows; Joanne and Leon on the left side with Isobel; Phoebe's father and his fiancee way over to the right. Larry was sitting in the row behind them, drumming his fingers on the back of a seat.  
  
Charity, Darren, and Violet were up on the balcony. His sister was sitting in a chair this time.  
  
Everyone burst into disappointed and relieved applause when the astronaut was done speaking, and Mrs. Germaine stepped up to the podium again. Thank you. And now, if you'll please welcome Stephen Spencer, our first student essayist of the evening.  
  
He wasn't a public speaker, and he would be a filthy liar to say that he wasn't nervous. Hi, everyone. The microphone shrieked when he first spoke into it. Sorry about that. Okay. After a glance at the speech that Mr. Caisson had brandished gleefully just a week ago, I remember sitting in this exact same room four years ago. Some people in the audience were already fidgeting. _Oh no_, they were thinking, _not another one of these_. A lot of the ninth-graders were probably worried about whether the subjects would be hard, whether they'd be able to find their classes, and whether they'd be forced to stand on tables and sing the school song. A few people in the class, mostly ones who'd been asked to sing, laughed slightly at this, and he began to relax a little bit. And I guess I was scared of all that stuff, but more than anything, I was scared that I wouldn't fit in. Because I think a lot of you already knew that that was the most important thing about high school. And I think a lot of you, like me, spent the next couple of years trying and trying be part of something, some inner circle, to belong. You wore the right clothes, you kept your ear to the floor for the latest trends, you tried to establish yourselves as people who were With It. Most of the time, when we finally realize that trying to hard isn't going to get us anywhere, it doesn't take something huge, something absolutely life-changing. But once in a while, it does. He stared fixedly at a point on the opposite wall. _I can't look at any of them, I can't say this, I can't do this. Not in front of everyone. I can't._ Those of you who know what I'm talking about, or have just figured it out -- the exit signs are there, there, there, and over there, and there. A _great_ number of people fidgeted at that, and a few did get up to leave, but quite a few more laughed.  
  
Stephen grinned back at them. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about people who are so committed to blending into the crowd, that they'll do just about anything to do it. Isobel pressed her shell-pink lips together at that. Larry had stopped drumming his fingers and had frowned ever-so-slightly, as if having the vaguest notion of _why_ this guy was looking at him like that. Kurt was beaming across his holographic face, and Angelina -- could it be? -- had tears glinting in her eyes. Or maybe that was just the lights. He thought of her saying, _This isn't about you_, and knew what she meant now. It _wasn't_ just about him. No matter what tragic-hero, high-and-lonely-destiny ideals he'd tried to adopt, he _hadn't_ been alone. Everyone else had -- and this was perhaps the corniest and the _truest_ thing of all -- been on journeys as well.   
  
And that was enough, this time, to make him keep talking.  
  
But he was the one faced with complete and utter silence when he was done, bringing him down from his high like a lead balloon. Everyone was _staring_ again, and nobody, _nobody_ was clapping. _What happened? What did I say?_  
  
Nobody was clapping, except one person. On the balcony. Clapping as loudly as her small hands could manage. It was Violet.  
  
Slowly, slowly, she was joined by her parents, who also rose to their feet.  
  
Then by Amanda, Margali, and Kurt.  
  
Then by Phoebe, Angelina, and, even more slowly, the rest of the class. Larry was off to the side, applauding slowly and deliberately, as if it required some thought.  
  
It still wasn't everyone, and it wouldn't be, no matter what. Joanne was silently stewing, Isobel looked terrified, and people he didn't even know simply looked baffled. And it shouldn't have been the slightest bit okay, but it was. He hadn't really hoped to change their minds, after all.  
  
**  
  
At the reception in the packed cafeteria, after they had all returned their rented caps and gowns to the office, he accepted congratulations from both his parents, lifted Violet up and spun her around. Those people who didn't clap for you, they suck, she whispered in his ear. I love you, Stevie.  
  
Thanks, Vi. I love you, too. He set her down.  
  
Congratulations, _mein freund_, Kurt said.  
  
Stephen turned to his family. Mom, Dad, Vi, you know Kurt and Amanda, right?  
  
Charity and Darren shook hands with both, not even making a fuss at Kurt's furry fingers beneath the hologram. Stephen had long ago warned them about that, and even if he hadn't, he wouldn't let their reactions ruin this night, any more than he was going to be... well... gotten to by the people who had understood and were hurrying past him, whispering.  
  
Not this time.  
  
Just a few feet away, Phoebe and Angelina were posing for pictures with each other, with their friends, and, after what appeared to be a silent consultation,with their mother, as Leon, who'd brought the camera, pressed the shutter button over and over. Phoebe and Isobel side by side... Haley with a noisemaker in her mouth and dark blue beads adorning her dreadlocks... Angelina gathered in Larry's arms. So things were okay between them again, or sort of okay. Whoever had taken the first step, it was a minor miracle.  
  
One of many.   
  
Phoebe glanced at the other small crowd, whispered an excuse-me to hers, and sidled over to them, respendant -- that was the only word for it -- in a flame-colored dress and the pale-blue necklace he'd given her for Valentine's Day. To Charity, What do you think of the speech he made?  
  
It was very good. Very... She looked to be searching for a word that would be neither offensive nor a lie. Very courageous. Very moving. Her husband nodded in agreement. We have a lot to talk about.  
  
Stephen suppressed the urge to jump in the air and shout,   
  
__As if she were the mind reader, Phoebe knew exactly what he was thinking. You... we... we did it, she told him. We survived. And I think you were _wonderful_.  
  
The urge had passed... but not the rest of so many things that he was feeling right now, that he didn't think he'd be able to contain all of them. More than survived. She took a step forward, leaned up very slightly, and kissed him right in front of everyone, and he returned the kiss, and everyone stopped mattering for a long, long, long moment. _Everything_ stopped mattering. He brushed the last words across her mind, filling them with only a fraction of those emotions, but it was enough. And I'm only as wonderful as we are together.  
  
When they separated, she said huskily, as if she were trying to hold back tears of her own, That's pretty damn good.  
  
Charity disrupted the moment with, Tell Joanne that the four of you are invited to our cookout tomorrow, to celebrate.  
  
_Full circle,_ Stephen thought. That was how it had started, at one of their cookouts two years ago. They'd been on the brink of something new, and he hadn't been entirely sure of what his future held. Of what he wanted it to hold. Now, as he looked at Phoebe, who was laughing half at something Kurt had said and half in pure excitement, he was starting to get a pretty good idea.  
  
_A/N: Well, Neva's just swinging back and forth between heart-rending angst and mad goopy cheesiness, isn't she? Epilogue will be coming your way directly!_  
  
  
  
_


	42. Epilogue

Epilogue  
  
Violet was drifting in a dream that was three parts flashback and one part the speculation that five years of distance had added to the inevitable blank spaces in her memory. The ceremony itself had been boring. The night in general had not.   
  
The lights and crushing embraces faded, to be replaced by a hard surface against her back and a hand gently shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes a crack, at first not recognizing the door-lined hallway.  
  
Her brother was looking down at her, pale and slightly shaken. He drew her to her feet. How long have you been here?  
  
What time is it? He told her, and she came fully awake, cursing twice. Almost two hours. I have to call Mom and Dad.  
  
Do they know?  
  
Yeah, I took the train.  
  
What are you doing here? Stephen asked as he unlocked the door to the apartment and waved her inside. It's good to see you, but when I saw you lying there, I thought at first...  
  
Violet gasped. Oh. I'm sorry...  
  
Kurt says he went through the same thing with Amanda. We've all been pretty jumpy for most of the summer. But then I looked closer, and you were smiling.  
  
I was? She supposed she had been. I was having a good dream.  
  
I could tell. So, could I ask what you _are_ doing here?  
  
I came to invite you home for my birthday, first of all, but that's not for a few weeks. And Phoebe, too, if she's back by then.  
  
She will be. We'll talk about it. He had opened the refrigerator. Do you want anything, my all-too-alive baby sister? Soda?  
  
No thanks.   
  
Hey... why didn't you tell me you were coming when you called the other day?  
  
I didn't know then. I was living dangerously.  
  
We're all living dangerously, Stephen said philosophically, then became even more serious. How is Teresa?  
  
She'd told him a bit about what he'd missed. Still completely rocked. She told her mother as soon as she got home, and the two of them talked about it for I guess a long while. The story, near as she could figure, was that Teresa had read some of her parents' love letters in a fit of curiosity about her estranged father, and her overactive imagination had led her to believe that he had been a mutant. It had contributed to her fear, and the pitch that so many people from both sides of the argument seemed to use -- Your kids could be next! -- didn't help. _They have no idea how it must feel for the kids, for _us_, hearing that. _She can talk tine, as long as she doesn't yell, but that's not the point.  
  
Stephen sat down at the table. It's not.  
  
She says she doesn't want to think about what'll happen when school starts. I'm supposed to stick by her, not that I think she'll do anything crazy -- _speaking_ of things that nobody wanted to think about, things that made _some_ people cry themselves to sleep when they the idea first occurred to them -- but because I _think_ I would have anyway. Stuck by her, I mean. She shifted in her own seat and met his eyes. No, no, I didn't mention Xavier or anything. He scowled. Did I say something wrong?  
  
They're probably going to find her anyway, Stephen said ominously.  
  
I told her not to go anywhere without telling me.  
  
Good. I hope things turn out okay for her.  
  
So do I. And for you.  
  
So what's second of all?  
  
  
  
You said you came to invite me home, first of all. What's second of all?  
  
She reached into her bag. I wanted to give you these back. And she laid the notebooks on the table. Tell Phoebe thank you.  
  
You can tell her yourself.  
  
So do you know whatever happened with Larry and Angelina? I kind of figured out, when I read through again, that someone had played with his head, she clarified. Was it... you know...  
  
It was.  
  
But what I was really wondering was why they aren't together anymore.  
  
Stephen placed his elbows on the table, then lowered them again, and sighed. From what I heard, the two of them traveled across the country together after she was finished with school, and stayed a couple for, I think, another year, but they... grew apart. Stayed friends, but grew apart anyway. And they lost touch completely after his dad died. He didn't say _Good riddance_ out loud, but his eyes did. According to Phoebe, it's the last time they ever saw each other. She thinks Angelina misses him still, and that's why she's never been happy with anyone else.  
  
What do you think? Violet was curious.  
  
I don't think it's much like Angel to pine, but I could be wrong.  
  
It's sad... Not meaning just the way things had turned out between those two, either.  
  
And he knew it.   
  
Violet stared at the notebooks that held the most important year of two lives. She still had so many questions, ones that had come to her as she read and the ones she had thought of since. But she wasn't going to ask them, even if he did have the answers, because it was _their_ story. His and Phoebe's. She even thought that she could settle for not knowing whether it was going to end in happily ever after, as long as nothing, not her family, not the government, caused her to lose touch with it. And she promised herself now that nothing ever would. In many ways, her dream had recalled had been the perfect happy ending, except it _wasn't_ an ending. Promises weren't always kept, and love that seemed so fresh and sweet and wild in photos eventually faded, mellowed, or changed. But the story always continued.  
  
Is there a third of all'? Stephen brought her back to reality and to the shadowed room.  
  
She gave him her best smile, the one she'd almost forgotten. I'd like to hear more about the X-Men.  
  
  
  
  
  



	43. Author's Note

Acknowledgments and Final Notes  
  
First of all, I thank _all_ my readers, every last one of you, as well as everyone else who listened to me complain and exalt about the Wallglass Saga. This mammoth undertaking couldn't be... well... undertaken without the support of the following people who deserve special mention.  
  
In real life, or some reasonable fascimile thereof...  
  
Olivia: For the ego boosts, whether I deserved them or not.  
  
Sarah: For helping me improvise countless plot scenarios, for your faith in my characters that helped shape who they are, and for being the biggest Doug Ramsey fan I know. His presence in the story is all for you.  
  
Bex: For a love of Nightcrawler that transcends the boundaries of reality. ...Is that the X-Men symbol?...  
  
Kathleen: For making notes in the margins and supporting me in whatever I do.  
  
And in the fan fiction world...  
  
My muses: Charles for providing the spark, Warren for pulling me through the rocky parts and helping me see it through to the end (Time is fanfic!), and Stephen and Phoebe for not only being wonderful lead characters but a constant inspiration as well.  
  
Red Witch: For constant -- and I do mean _constant_, we're talking almost _every single chapter_ -- encouragement. For an an endless reservoir of creativity and capacity for humor. Long live the Misfits! Can't wait for more!  
  
Sandoz: Lancitty forever and a day! My fellow shipper, partner in snarking, and Larry's most ardent admirer. And a mind-blowing writer besides. May _Rock Your World_ be the beginning of a long and fruitful _Evolution_ fanfic career.  
  
pruningshears: Glad you liked all the movie references.  
  
Jillybean: For convincing me to go ahead with this version of the story in the first place, and being there in so many ways from the very beginning.  
  
Air Pirate 96: For the song suggestions.  
  
Elrohir: The reasons why I'm thankful for you would probably take up the rest of this page, and then some. And I think you know it all, as it is.  
  
WritingMoose, DarkFire, Jimaine, Post, idunski: I miss you all.  
  
Other media has been instrumental in an inspirational to the story's progress, whether or not I made references or simply drew on some of the, er, ideas. I mention _Friends, _my guilty-pleasure TV show ever since the sixth grade, a few times; references to _The Princess Bride_, as you know, abound; and J.K. Rowling's _Harry Potter_ series was the first to really influence what I know and how I feel about the way beings with otherworldly powers treat beings without them. And, of course, credit is also due to Stan Lee, the evil genius himself, and to everyone who has contributed to the X-Men universe.   
  
characters are: Graydon Creed, Margali Szardos, Larry and Tanya Trask, Dani Moonstar, Alison Blaire (Dazzler), Everett Thomas, Maeve Rourke, Teresa Rourke, Sean Cassidy, Monet St. Croix, and Paige and Sam Guthrie. If I forgot anyone, my deepest apologies. I don't own them.   
  
So what else to say? Eighteen months is not a long time to have completed five novel-length works of fan fiction, but it's been so much fun -- so much of a lot of things -- that it feels almost like it should have been longer. If nothing else, it's evidence that this story was already out there, waiting for someone to put their own spin on it. (Or maybe it's just evidence that I need to get a life. Take your pick.) And the themes herein -- trust, choices, and most of all _acceptance_ -- are far older.  
  
As for my next feat... well. I'll be very busy for quite a while, but, to coin a phrase, you haven't seen the last of me. Thank you all again for being there.  
  
Peace, love, and mutant madness,  
Neva


End file.
